‘Lessons in Chemistry’ by Bonnie Garmus

If I were better versed in chemistry, I would start off with drawing parallels between this book and some sort of chemical reaction where there’s a big confident beginning, petering off into a spluttering little anti-climax. Alas, although I can think of parallels in other spheres (political movements? relationships?), I don’t have the chemical knowledge to think of a chemical metaphor. But that’s how I felt about this book: it started off well, then just sagged into a gloopy sentimental mess.

Elizabeth Zott is a research chemist working at the Hastings Research Institute in the early 1960s, the only woman in an all-male working environment (except, of course, for the admin). We now know enough about the side-lining of women in science through Rosalind Franklin and movies like ‘Hidden Figures‘ to recognize the institutionalized injustices that see Elizabeth’s work appropriated and assumed to be the work of the men surrounding her. Almost against her own better judgement, she falls in love with her co-worker Calvin Evans and when her life suddenly falls apart, she finds herself unemployed, unmarried and with a fractious baby. Fiercely independent, she has to learn to accept help from an older neighbour and the father of her daughter’s school friend when he offers her a job to host a TV cooking show. She makes this job her own by introducing the chemistry that she is shut away from professionally to her viewers, housewives at home watching afternoon television. She does not talk down to her viewers and she attains a cult following.

And at this point, my own chemical reaction starts to fizzle out. Yes, we had our professor Julius Sumner Miller in the 1960s, but it stretches credulity to think about a cooking show veering into academic territory like Elizabeth’s ‘Supper at Six’ does. Then there’s the dog (yes, the dog) Six Thirty who is anthropomorphized to the point of having his own dialogue. And the precocious child. And the angelic neighbour. And the mysterious benefactor. Oh stop.

I liked the tone of this book at the start, but it seemed to get lost by the end. The narrative voice was one of those ‘Voices of God’ commentaries, slightly ironic and comforting and imbuing the book with the sense of being a morality tale, or a fairy-tale. There were many one-liners which were sharp and pointed, and certainly coming from a 21st century feminist-ish perspective. But the ending was just a sentimental ‘everything-works-out-in-the-end’ hash. Elizabeth deserved more.

My rating: 6/10

Sourced from: purchased (!) Only because there were too many holds on it at the library

Read because: Ivanhoe Reading Circle selection.