Mary B: A Novel: An untold story of Pride and Prejudice

The five Bennett sisters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice are well known to any lover of classic literature. There’s beautiful Jane, the eldest, and feisty, also beautiful Elizabeth. There are the silly yet beautiful younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia. And in the middle is Mary, given scant time on the pages of Austen’s timeless novel save a few wisps of unflattering detail–clearly, she is the least beautiful and marriageable of the Bennett sisters. Yet Mary is the sister who has captured the imagination of author Katherine Chen, and she drives the novel Mary B as a self-aware and ambitious first-person narrator, searching for meaning in a world that values a good marriage above just about everything else.

Writing in a style that echoes Austen’s, Chen breathes new life into a little-known character, giving her a path that may not have been admired in her time but which rivals Jane’s and Elizabeth’s as a definition of “success” for a smart young woman. Plucked from obscurity, Mary finally has a chance to find her way and seize her own chance for happiness.