An interesting and surprising look at a classic story and an often-forgotten character.
In her debut, Parris imagines what Pride and Prejudice character Charlotte Lucas’ life might have been like after her marriage to Mr. Collins.
Charlotte is known to readers as Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend from Pride and Prejudice. Unlike Elizabeth, who marries for love, Charlotte is not quite so lucky. She marries Mr. Collins, the stable but slightly awkward clergyman she describes as “tall, dark, and…pious.” Charlotte knows her prospects are slim, and she’s determined to marry well to provide a future for herself, even if that future doesn’t involve passion. With Mr. Collins as her husband, Charlotte lives a life that is safe and calm—but unexciting. While Mr. Collins treats her well, their relationship never feels particularly romantic. And then Charlotte meets Col. Fitzwilliam, Mr. Darcy’s cousin. Sparks fly instantly, and soon Charlotte finds herself sneaking around to spend more time with Fitzwilliam. Their attraction shouldn’t grow into a full-blown love story for many reasons, chief among them Charlotte’s marriage. That doesn’t stop them from developing feelings that may very well lead to heartbreak. A happily-ever-after seems nearly impossible, and to be sure, not every character here will end up happy, which may be a point of contention among some Pride and Prejudice fans. Staunch Austenites might blanch at this depiction of the characters they’ve come to love, although the book will be welcome to others who longed to see Charlotte take center stage and find her own happiness. It’s also satisfying to read the inner thoughts of Mr. Collins and come to view him a less mockable character. Parris gives Charlotte’s quest for happiness a more modern romance-novel feel than the original text—for example, Charlotte defends her feelings for Fitzwilliam by saying, “If God made me capable of love, then it must be his will that I find it.” While some of the characters’ actions may seem surprising, there have been enough Pride and Prejudice retellings that there’s plenty of room for one where Charlotte follows her bliss.
An interesting and surprising look at a classic story and an often-forgotten character.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780316602358
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.
And now for some lessons in poetry and typesetting.
After Lessons in Chemistry (2022), a debut that became one of the most popular books of recent years, Garmus applies her unique comic sensibility to the story of Batter Gray, a man named after a family dog of mythic talents. A poetry maven who was reading Auden as a fourth grader, he was raised by a type-designer mother and historian father who dearly hoped he would choose some more viable profession than poetry. But via an amazing stroke of luck, he lands a job after college at Peck & Peck, an illustrious literary journal located in a beautiful building in New York City. He’s at the very bottom of the complex and dysfunctional totem pole, making copies in the basement, struggling not to run afoul of the cantankerous editor-in-chief, Salton Peck, or his smarmy assistant, Dexter York, both of whom have taken an instant dislike to our hero (and can never get his name right. Few people can). And to be honest, Batter is not without his flaws. The novel bogs down a bit in the middle, with Salton constantly excoriating his staff in ALL CAPS and much ado over the possibility that submissions have been taken outside the building, which is forbidden. Along the way, many, many famous poets are name-checked, as are many typefaces, since Batter has been raised to instantly identify a font in the wild. The best example of this occurs during his brief sojourn in jail: “The thing I kind of admired about Motherfucker II, besides his manners, was this huge tattoo he had on his neck that read I will fuck you up in ITC Bolt. Call me my mother’s son, but whoever inked it nailed the kerning.” The narrative picks up steam toward the end, as bad guys become good guys, mysteries are solved, and Batter throws one hell of a party.
Mostly charming, sometimes twee, with some really lovely things to say about poetry.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781668251065
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
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