Book: Peck & Peck
Author: Bonnie Garmus
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2026
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Synopsis : “It’s 1982, New York City. Crime is on the rise, muggings are in the streets, and Batter Gray, recent college graduate with a skill that no one wants – an “ear” for poetry – is worried about his future. While all his friends have real jobs, he’s folding T-shirts at the Gap. As for love? No. Not unless you count Sallie Mae, the student loan tyrant. He hears from Sallie all the time.
But when Batter gets a dream job at Peck & Peck, the most prestigious poetry quarterly in the world, his life moves into the literary fast lane. Soon Batter is knee-deep in the secret war between the two Editors in Chief, the famous Peck brothers – twins and enemies – as well as being privy to the private affairs of their thirty-nine editors, whose professed mission is the same: Find originality. Reward creativity. Burn the rest.
And by “burn,” they mean incinerate. Because at Peck & Peck, “good” isn’t good enough, “interesting” doesn’t cut it, plagiarists aren’t tolerated, and parolees run the mailroom. Still want to submit your poem? Go with God.”

Review : Peck & Peck is a book about poetry. Kind of. It’s also a book about the 1980’s. Kind of. And about twins. Kind of. What Peck & Peck emphatically is, wholeheartedly and without reserve, is a book about the wild and wonderful things that make us so uniquely human and all the ways in which we share this experience together. And while it’s set in the 1980’s, it’s also a 400-something page, profound yet subtle, argument in opposition to AI; that which can never know our shared humanity.

Batter Gray has a strange name. People get it wrong more than they don’t. His boss at Peck & Peck, Salton, calls him Beater. Most people think it’s a nickname or mistake it for something like Baxter. In fact, it’s a family name, one that was passed down from his mother’s dog. Peppered throughout much of Peck & Peck are glimpses into Batter the dog’s history by way of implausible stories shared by Batter the human’s mother. These stories are miraculous and nonsensical and carry a well-worn whimsy that remind me of movies like Big Fish or Secondhand Lions – the magical stories you might tell a child about what your life was like or what grand adventures your childhood dog got into; stories that serve some function or purpose in the grand scheme of learning life’s lessons. But what if Batter the dog really did do miraculous things and go on grand adventures a dog could not seemingly go on? What if the magical and miraculous inspire us to cling to the human belief of hope?

Peck & Peck is a book about obsession. Obsession with poetry. Obsession with type face. Obsession with history. Obsession with finding the truly remarkable. Obsession with becoming something. It’s a book that peels back the layers of the mundane and shows the reader what might lie just beneath the surface, the ways in which we experience life’s little miracles: The way the light shines through the branches, or how strong an egg shell must be to protect the life within, the color of the sky at dawn, or what it feels like to sit next to someone on an airplane and hear them speak about your favorite book in a way that makes you rethink everything. It’s a book about yearning and longing and love lost. It’s about the duality of man, the good and bad all wrapped up into one simple package, the human experience.

Peck & Peck is a brilliant, wild, unputdownable ride through the magical and the mundane. It’s a series of contradictions at times and at others it’s a perfectly fitted puzzle piece. Garmus wields words like a master craftsman, bringing me into the world of Jay Gatsby’s rolling parties at times and taking me back in my own experience to some of the worst jobs I’ve ever worked. She has created something that is both wholly unlike my own life and somehow completely relatable to my own experience. It is a masterstroke that invites us all into remembrance of that which makes our existence so spectacular and wonderful. Peck & Peck is a book about the shared human experience.

Advice : I think if you enjoy poetry it might make this book just that little bit more enjoyable but it’s not a requirement! If you have hobbies and gifts and experiences you love with all your heart, this book with strike a cord in your heart. If you love a well crafted narrative, winding tale, and expertly maneuvered plot, this is going to be a must-read. Go ahead and pre-order it! You’ll want to read this one.