Bonnie Garmus’ sprightly second novel has much in common with her first, the irresistible 2022 bestseller Lessons in Chemistry (which she published at the age of 65).
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she → have → 65
Both deal with the pressures of the workplace, the rejections, resentments and ridicule, and both are flavoured by the same delicious screwball spirit that gave so much zest to so many zany Hollywood comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.
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that → deal → 1930s
Like them, the two books feature eccentric, expansive supporting casts whose wackiness embodies the mad, mad, mad, mad world we all have to deal with.
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we → feature → world
And just as dogs frequently play key roles in those films, they’re also pivotal in Garmus’s novels: Elizabeth’s Six-Thirty in the first, and Batter, who doesn’t actually appear in Peck & Peck but whose history has a significant role to play and whose name has been bestowed on the central character and narrator.
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name → play → character
Even more substantially, both books are touched by the tenor of the times in which they’re set.
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they → touch → which
For Lessons in Chemistry, it’s the 1960s as the set-upon Elizabeth takes a stand against a patriarchal order that would have her trapped on the sidelines.
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her → ’ → sidelines
In Peck & Peck, it’s the 1980s, as the timeworn struggle between business and the arts rears its ornery head once more inside the eponymous publishing company and against a background of technological change.
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struggle → ’ → change
A key difference between the books is that, whereas the first is written in the third person, surveying its female protagonist’s situation and circumstances from the outside, the new one places us inside its male protagonist’s tortured efforts to understand the forces that have shaped his life and, in his words, “to generate the one thing (he) craved more than anything: respect”.
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he → write → respect
We gradually come to recognise that, while Batter is well-armed for his encounters with the world – he has a lot of data on tap, much of it gleaned from his type-designer mother and historian father – there’s much about it that he doesn’t understand.
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he → come → that
Alongside this, it becomes clear from his dealings with others that his instincts are more trustworthy than his actions.
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instincts → become → actions
As the book begins, he’s in prison.
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he → begin → prison
All that follows provides an explanation, his explanation, for how he ended up there.
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he → follow → explanation
It’s an ingeniously complicated route that begins with his family history and becomes especially convoluted when he bluffs his way into a job at Peck & Peck.
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he → ’ → Peck
, it’s currently under the sole management of Salton Peck.
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it → ’ → Peck
He’s taken charge after a falling-out with his twin brother, Declonius.
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He → take → brother
As its title suggests, the book’s founding principle is the idea that nothing can be viewed in isolation, that everything has its double, a shadow side.
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everything → suggest → double
The Peck & Peck building seems like a sanctuary when nobody’s around and a madhouse when they are.
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they → seem → sanctuary
The Peck brothers, the third generation of twins to head the company, are mirror opposites.
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brothers → head → company
The idealistic Declonius, a champion of the arts, oozes contempt for the dunderheads of the world who don’t appreciate their importance.
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who → ooze → importance
Of his brother, an abrasive, pontificating businessman, he says, “If he can’t quantitatively measure something’s value, then it’s worthless.
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it → pontificate → value
He’s haunted throughout by the one with whom he shared their mother’s womb and who didn’t survive, and his divided inner life comes to mirror the conflict between the Peck brothers.
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life → haunt → brothers
In the light cast by the book’s refutation of black and white certainties about anything, it’s clearly not by chance that his surname is Gray. Or that there’s much more to his mother’s preposterous stories about the dog he’s been named after than he (and we) initially realise.
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he → cast → dog
Garmus established herself as an astute and witty social satirist with Lessons in Chemistry and those qualities are again in evidence here.
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qualities → establish → evidence
Peck & Peck is admirably sharp in its depiction of how companies operate as a matter of course, riven by divisions, uncertainties and secrets at the same time as they provide opportunities for growth and adventure.
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they → operate → growth
It’s also hugely appealing in the empathy it shows for those hapless souls immersed in a maelstrom that seems to be denying them the respect they believe they deserve.
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they → ’ → respect
What else is happening in the book world?
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What → happen → world
- Magda Szubanski’s memoir is full of tender truths
- Pulitzer Prizewinner Barbara Kingsolver on her new novel and Appalachian pride
- He lasted 11 days in Trump’s White House.
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He → last → House
Now the Mooch has a warning
- How BookTok and Korean snack wrappers have made reading radical
The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger.
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Booklist → have → Steger
Get it delivered every Friday.
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it → get → ?
The Aporia
