Lessons in Chemistry is the book I’ve been dreaming of since I finished Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser last year. It’s just the quirky, wry, sharp, complex story we all need when the world seems both chaotic and frightening. When I was reading Lessons in Chemistry, I laughed out loud, I cheered on the protagonist, and as the book ended, I sighed over how little progress women have made since the 1960s.
The novel takes place primarily in the 1960s when Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist blacklisted from getting a Ph.D. after being sexually assaulted, takes a job at Hastings, a private lab, and meets Calvin Evans, the lab’s most prominent chemist. They fall deeply in love and she moves into Calvin’s home. They’re ecstatically happy together when Calvin dies in a freak accident. Elizabeth soon learns that she’s pregnant and the lab’s director fires her. Desperate for money to support herself and her baby, Elizabeth takes a job hosting Supper at Six, a TV cooking show. She isn’t happy, but the ratings are good so she makes more money than she did as a chemist. She closes each show with “Children, set the table, your mother needs a moment to herself.”
She had wanted to continue her research in abiogenesis, but Donatti, the director of Chemistry at Hastings, hated her and despite funding for her passion, he didn’t want her around. Garmus’s treatment of characters like Donatti showcases both the novel’s comedic sense and the depiction of the times:
“Elizabeth Zott. He didn’t like Zott. She was pushy, smart, opinionated. Worse, she had terrible taste in men. Unlike so many others, though, he did not find Zott attractive. He glanced down at a silver-framed photograph of his family: three big-eared boys bracketed by the sharp-beaked Edith and himself. He and Edith were a team the way couples were meant to be a team—not by sharing hobbies like rowing for fuck’s sake—but in the way their sexes deemed socially and physically appropriate. He brought home the bacon; she pumped out the babies. It was a normal, productive, God-approved marriage. Did he sleep with other women? What a question. Didn’t everyone?”
Bonnie Garmus makes Elizabeth Zott, her daughter, her dog, her neighbor, and every single character in this novel come alive. The novel celebrates smart women and girls with humor while showing how good men also make a difference. Calvin’s childhood secrets and the mysterious foundation funding Hastings offer subplots that keep the action moving in this propulsive page-turner. Everything in the universe seems to be conspiring against Elizabeth, yet she triumphs and that my friends is exactly what we need to see and salute in this strange world that seems to be working to reduce women’s rights.
Summing it Up: Read Lessons in Chemistry for a fast-paced, character-driven tale that’s long on humor and filled with wisdom and nuance. Chuckle as the gifted Elizabeth refuses to act dumb to get ahead and cheer as the bad guys get their comeuppance. Smile at Elizabeth’s brilliant, protective dog and celebrate authors like Bonnie Garmus.
Rating: 5 Stars
Publication Date: April 5, 2022
Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Dessert, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Pigeon Pie, Sushi, Book Club
Author Website: https://www.bonniegarmus.com/
Read an Excerpt: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/677234/lessons-in-chemistry-by-bonnie-garmus/
What Others Are Saying:
Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bonnie-garmus/lessons-chemistry/
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/books/lessons-in-chemistry-bonnie-garmus.html
Publishers Weekly: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780385547345
A book that sparks joy with every page. . . It had me laughing one minute and air-punching the next. Elizabeth Day, author of “How to Fail”
“Elizabeth and Calvin’s prickly, funny and odd love story leaps off the page. The two are truly soul mates, and their happiness should be ordained, but life and this novel are far more complicated than that ... becomes a witty and sharp dramedy about resilience and found families ... The scope of what this iconoclastic woman goes through is breathtaking ... Not one moment of Elizabeth’s story rings false; every detail is a well-documented component of the time period yet specific to her experience. Readers won’t be able to get enough of Elizabeth and her makeshift family. Lessons in Chemistry is a story to return to again and again.” —Bookpage
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