Book Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

 

★★★★★ - Five Stars

I wasn't sure I was going to like this book.

There. I've said it.

I'd seen Lessons in Chemistry absolutely everywhere, and sometimes when a book has been hyped quite this much, I become strangely reluctant to read it. Everyone tells you it's wonderful, expectations become ridiculous, and you almost feel as though you're doing something wrong if you don't love it.

Then I met Elizabeth Zott.

And that was that.

Set in California in the 1950s and early 1960s, Lessons in Chemistry follows Elizabeth, a brilliant chemist trying to build a career in a world where far too many men think the words ‘woman’ and ‘scientist’ simply don't belong in the same sentence. Her life takes an unexpected turn and eventually sees her become the reluctant presenter of a television cooking programme called Supper at Six.

Except Elizabeth doesn't really believe in simply teaching women how to cook.

She's teaching chemistry.

And, without entirely intending to, she's teaching them that perhaps they don't have to accept the lives other people have decided they should lead.

I loved her.

Elizabeth is clever, literal, stubborn and completely unwilling to make herself smaller simply to make other people more comfortable. This causes her an extraordinary amount of trouble.

There were moments when I wanted to cheer for her and others when I wanted to reach into the book and say, ‘Elizabeth, perhaps don't say that particular thing out loud.’

She would have ignored me.

Obviously.

What I hadn't expected was how dark the novel could be. The bright cover and all the talk about the funny bits had somehow convinced me I was getting a fairly light read about a female scientist who ends up on television.

It isn't.

There is grief here. There is sexism, discrimination, abuse and the casual cruelty of people who have power over somebody they consider less important than themselves. Some of it made me genuinely angry.

And yet the book is also very funny.

That's quite a balancing act, and for the most part I thought Garmus pulled it off beautifully. One minute something awful is happening and a few pages later I was laughing again.

Then there is Six-Thirty.

Six-Thirty is the dog.

Six-Thirty is magnificent.

I am not accepting arguments on this matter.

The supporting characters were actually one of my favourite parts of the novel. Elizabeth may sit at its centre, but gradually this little collection of people forms around her, and some of the friendships were every bit as important to me as the romantic relationship.

The novel has clearly struck a chord with an enormous number of readers. It currently sits at around 4.28 stars from well over a million Goodreads ratings and won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Debut Novel in 2022.

That doesn't mean everybody loves it.

One criticism I can understand is that Elizabeth occasionally feels almost too modern for the period. There were moments when I became very aware that I was reading a twenty-first-century novel about the 1950s and 60s rather than feeling completely immersed in that era. Some readers have also found the chemistry references heavy-handed or the story less subtle than they expected.

I can see where those criticisms come from.

They just didn't stop me enjoying it.

I also suspect your reaction to Elizabeth herself will determine how you feel about the book. If her bluntness irritates you in the first fifty pages, you're probably in for a very long 400 pages.

I found her refreshing.

What stayed with me most, though, wasn't the television programme or even the chemistry. It was the idea of how exhausting it must be to know you're good at something and constantly have people insist that you can't possibly be good at it because you're the wrong sex.

Elizabeth doesn't want special treatment.

She wants to be allowed to do her work.

Apparently, that's revolutionary.

By the time I finished, I understood why this book had been sitting on bestseller tables for so long. It made me laugh, made me furious and, unexpectedly, made me cry.

So once again, the enormously hyped book has won.

I'm beginning to find this annoying.