Poor Mary Bennet. The misfit middle daughter in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was only noticed — if she was noticed — for her plainness, her sermonizing and her excruciating performances on the pianoforte.
Until now.
In Katherine J. Chen's "Mary B.," Mary gets her due, and some payback.
This time, Mary tells the story, and her version will challenge readers' views of the least lovable sister in Austen's original — and her siblings.
Chen's debut novel joins "Pride and Prejudice" in progress and takes readers beyond its happy ending at the double wedding of older sisters Jane and Lizzie. Mary's place, again, is on the periphery.
"It is very hard to live one's life perpetually in waiting, and I cannot tell you how many men have passed through Longbourn to court one or other of my sisters, and how all of them never concerned themselves with me, though I sat in the same room and was as equally capable of speech or motion," Mary observes.
Things start to change when Mary comes to visit Lizzie, now Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, at her sprawling Pemberley estate. She finds a sadder-but-wiser sister beset by worries over childbirth and her duties as mistress of the manor, but no less sharp-tongued.
Left alone in the library, Mary shifts from reading novels to writing one. She spins a lively Gothic tale of an intrepid queen swept into a series of death-defying adventures. She gets a surprising assist from Mr. Darcy, who helps her talk through plot points. Should Leonora's loyal handmaiden rescue her from the dungeon? Or perhaps Leonora should agree to marry the evil grand duke, "then strangle him or bash his head in with a rock. The rest is easy enough," she says.
