Peck & Peck by — Book Review

Editors who believe themselves devoted to art are also capable of insecurity, pettiness, vanity, and cruelty.

That is more interesting than simply making the journal corrupt.

Creative organizations are usually messier than that. People can genuinely care about literature and still behave terribly while defending their place within it.

Publishers Weekly sees the journal as an analogy for the ruthless corporate culture of the period, and that comparison makes sense. Batter chooses poetry partly because it seems different from conventional professional life, only to discover that prestige, hierarchy, and ambition follow him there too. PublishersWeekly.com

You cannot necessarily escape corporate behavior by working somewhere full of poets.

That is a good joke because it is also believable.

The early-1980s New York setting helps. The city is rougher than the polished literary image Batter may have imagined, and the contrast between his idealistic attachment to poetry and the daily practical reality of work gives the novel room to be both nostalgic and unsentimental.

There is also a strong thread about finding the kind of work that actually fits a person.

Batter's problem is not that he lacks interests. He knows exactly what he cares about.

The problem is that the world has not provided an obvious way to turn that interest into adulthood.

That makes his situation surprisingly contemporary despite the 1980s setting. Plenty of people still reach their twenties knowing what they love but not knowing whether loving it qualifies as a plan.

Garmus seems interested in that anxiety without treating practical concerns as shallow. Student loans are real. Rent is real. Parents worry for reasons that are not always unreasonable.

The novel's argument is not simply that everyone should follow a passion and ignore money.

It is closer to saying that practicality can also become a form of fear.

That is where Batter's journey becomes more than a quirky publishing story.

He has to decide what kind of compromise still allows him to recognize himself.

The poetry itself matters because it gives the novel a reason to keep asking what originality actually means.

The staff at Peck & Peck treats originality as almost sacred. That sounds admirable until someone has to define it.

Is originality something completely new?

Is it a familiar idea expressed in a voice nobody has heard before?

Can someone learn originality?

Can editors recognize it reliably?

And perhaps most importantly, what happens when the people responsible for rewarding originality become more interested in protecting their own authority?

Those questions give the publishing satire some depth.

The novel also has fun with typography and fonts, thanks largely to Batter's mother, who is a type designer. Kirkus notes that Batter has been raised to recognize typefaces instinctively, and that detail seems very much in keeping with Garmus's style: something strange enough to be funny but specific enough to make a character memorable. Kirkus Reviews

I suspect readers will divide on exactly this sort of material.

For some, the fonts, editorial eccentricities, strange names, absurd office traditions, and exaggerated characters will create the charm.

For others, it may become too cute.

Kirkus describes the novel as charming but occasionally twee, which is probably the most useful warning to give readers who found the quirky parts of Lessons in Chemistry either delightful or irritating. Kirkus Reviews

That comparison with Lessons in Chemistry will follow this book everywhere.

It is unavoidable.

Garmus's debut became enormously successful, and Peck & Peck arrives under the pressure of being the second novel after a phenomenon. The easiest mistake would have been to recreate Elizabeth Zott under another name.

Batter Gray seems deliberately different.

He is younger, less certain, and entering a world rather than fighting one from an established position. His struggle is not primarily about proving his professional competence against discrimination. It is about figuring out what competence, integrity, and adulthood mean in the first place.

That makes this feel more like a bildungsroman than a repeat of the earlier book.

Still, the Garmus trademarks appear to remain.

Unusual names.

Eccentric supporting characters.

An intelligent outsider.

A workplace full of absurd rules.

A dog with suspiciously strong narrative importance.

And underneath the comedy, a sincere belief that people's oddest interests may be the things most worth protecting.

The book apparently becomes more complicated as Batter makes increasingly serious mistakes. Advance reviews mention mishaps that extend well beyond awkward office politics, including trouble with the law and accusations surrounding arson. I would rather not spoil those developments, because the escalation seems to be part of the fun. PublishersWeekly.com

What matters more is that Batter does not remain a passive observer.

He starts at Peck & Peck thinking that getting inside the institution will validate his love of poetry.

Instead, being inside forces him to decide what that love actually requires from him.

That distinction is important.

Loving art is easy when the art is beautiful.

It becomes harder when institutions built around art become ugly.

The novel also seems to care about grief more than its comic premise initially suggests. Batter's lost twin exists in the background of his identity, and advance descriptions suggest that questions of absence and belonging gradually become more central.

That gives the story emotional room beyond office satire.

A person can be shaped by someone they never really knew.

That is a strange idea, but not an unbelievable one.

Family stories do this all the time. A missing person, an early death, or an event that happened before someone can remember it may still affect how parents speak, worry, compare, or imagine what might have been.

If Garmus handles that quietly, it could become one of the more affecting parts of the book.

Where I expect some readers to struggle is the pacing.

Both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly note that the story slows in the middle. Publishers Weekly says the book runs somewhat long, while Kirkus describes repeated workplace conflicts that bog down the narrative before the final section gathers momentum. Kirkus Reviews

At 432 pages, that matters.

A quirky workplace can be enjoyable for a long time, but eccentricity needs movement. If every new chapter simply introduces another bizarre rule or another difficult editor, charm can turn into repetition.

The stronger material sounds like the moments when Batter's choices have consequences.

That is where character replaces atmosphere.

I also think the novel's affection for poetry will be important to whether readers connect with it. You do not need to be a poetry reader, but the book clearly wants the act of caring deeply about poems to feel reasonable rather than pretentious.

That is harder than it sounds.

Fiction about writers and publishing can become too impressed with its own literary world. Peck & Peck appears to avoid some of that problem by making the institution ridiculous while preserving genuine respect for the art.

The editors may be absurd.

The poems are not.

That distinction is probably the heart of the book.

People can corrupt the structures surrounding art without making the art itself meaningless.

There is also something appealing about setting this story before the internet transformed publishing. Manuscripts are physical objects. Decisions take place in rooms. Editors control access more visibly. A rejection has weight because there are fewer alternative routes around the gatekeepers.

That makes Peck & Peck's power easier to see.

It also gives the act of burning rejected work a wonderfully ridiculous physicality.

Today, rejection might mean a form email.

Here, apparently, they have an incinerator.

That is the sort of joke Garmus can probably stretch because it serves both the comic world and the novel's larger concern with judgment.

Who decides what survives?

That question applies to poems, careers, reputations, relationships, and even memories.

The title itself suggests doubling, repetition, and rivalry.

Peck and Peck.

Two names that are the same but belong to different people.

That seems appropriate for a novel interested in the idea that two people can look at the same thing and reach completely different conclusions.

Poetry depends on that possibility.

So does criticism.

So does adulthood.

By the end, advance reviews suggest the novel becomes warmer and more emotionally generous than its cutthroat workplace premise might imply. Booklist called it poignant and heartwarming, while Publishers Weekly emphasized its tender-hearted quality beneath the antic comedy. Simon & Schuster

That sounds consistent with Garmus's strengths.

Her humor works best when it is protecting something sincere.

In this case, that something appears to be creative work itself: the strange, impractical human urge to make something original even when there is no guarantee anyone will want it.

That is the part of Peck & Peck I find most appealing.

Batter is not pursuing poetry because it is safe.

He pursues it because it is the thing he hears differently from everyone else.

A career built around that ability may be absurd.

But so is spending a life pretending the ability does not matter.