In Mary B, she [Mary Bennet] narrates herself into being. Her defining trait is her lack of beauty ... But her inner life, as Chen imagines it, is exceedingly rich—a bit prim at the outset but evolving rapidly as she gains experience. Eventually she becomes what might seem inconceivable, given her origins: a lover, multiple times ... Mary B is a book that aims first to illuminate what it’s like to be unbeautiful, overlooked, and yet to feel love as passionately as the beautiful do. But it also hopes to refract the characters we’re sure we know so intimately from Pride and Prejudice ... There’s a strong hint of fan fiction to Mary’s fairly rapid trek toward a second and a third love, including a riotously joyful initiation into her sexuality. Chen is also an erratic ventriloquist. Sometimes she finds a true Austenian pitch...but elsewhere she misses it badly. More complicated, her readings of Austen’s characters can be weak ... Yet for all that, Mary’s narration is a heedless downhill pleasure—plush, ironic and illuminating.
Rather than remounting the Pride story in genre dress, Chen’s skillfully roots out blind spots in Austen’s perspective, the way Pride celebrated integrity and honesty but was often stingy with empathy or respect for contrarian women pursuing an intellectual life. Chen doesn’t soft-pedal how challenging Mary’s task is—she’s forced to keep much of her self-possessed spirit hidden. But quietude is a powerful resource ... Mary B is a tribute not just to Austen but to defiant women of any era.
Mary B deserves a place among the many additions to the Austen franchise. Random House assures that one doesn’t have to read Pride and Prejudice to enjoy this sequel, but knowledge of the first will enhance enjoyment of the second. P&P fans’ satisfaction likely will depend on how well they receive Mary’s critiques of key characters. Mary’s tale also invites a guilty rethinking of those witty put-downs that seemed to go over her head in the original novel. Rest assured, they did not.
Though timid and resigned at first, Mary's narrative voice grows acerbic, even caustic: she does not suffer fools and spares her family members no indignity. Readers of Pride and Prejudice already know of Mrs. Bennet's flightiness and Lydia's lack of self-control, but Mr. Bennet, Charlotte Lucas and Lizzy—especially Lizzy—do not come off well in this retelling. Only Jane, kind to the last, retains her sweetness and beauty. Austen purists may be scandalized at Chen's reimagining of these familiar characters and her handling of the Darcys' relationship, but the book's plot twists are thought-provoking.
This is the Mary Bennet familiar to readers, and it is a direct result of her seeming powerlessness and unremarkability that, in Chen’s reimagining, Mary experiences more of the world than the other four Bennet girls together. Living constantly under the radar, Mary is able to live a life nobody would suspect of her: one of scandal, tragedy, and even romance ... Chen’s retelling of Pride and Prejudice is of a far more modern feminism; one in which Mary is able to achieve what was so impossible for so many of her generation: the life of a truly independent—economically self-reliant and sexually liberated—woman.
After a witty prolog[ue] about the family, that wry and elegant tone unfortunately deteriorates into sappiness as Mary recounts the three loves of her life. A bit of satire and parody in the Austen tradition could have leavened Chen's interpretation. Reimagining Elizabeth Bennet as manipulative and gentle Charlotte Lucas as proud misses the point of Austen's timeless and beloved characters, and the author's many fans expect the protagonists in any retelling to be consistent with the originals ... Austen devotees should consider instead P.D. James's Death Comes to Pemberley or Jo Baker's Longbourn. The more adventurous might try John Kessel's Pride and Prometheus, in which Mary Bennet falls for Victor Frankenstein.
Although the writing is assured in this debut, and the idea of reassessing these familiar characters is promising, in this case, they are so inconsistent with their original iterations as to feel wholly unfamiliar ... the readers who will most enjoy this book are those who are not intimate with the original.
Chen’s charming and thoroughly satisfying debut shines a light on frumpy 19-year-old Mary Bennet ... Mary’s staid life changes trajectory when she is invited to Pemberley, the English estate belonging to Mr. Darcy and Lizzy after they marry ... and learns there are different ways to capture a man’s attention besides appearance. Chen’s lively retelling proves that centuries after its creation, Mary’s story deserves to be told.
Chen’s syntax is not a direct copy of Austen’s, but it complements the source material in its complexity and serves as a comfortable echo of both the period and Mary’s pensive personality ... Janeites won’t find a perfect heir to Austen here, but as fan fiction, or a fresh novel of manners, Chen's work is compelling.
