Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.

But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with - of all things - her mind. True chemistry results.

Like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America's most beloved cooking show, Supper at Six. Elizabeth's unusual approach to cooking ('combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride') proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn't just teaching women to cook. She's daring them to change the status quo.

'Polished, funny, thought-provoking. Wearing its research lightly but confidently with sentences so stylishly turned it's hard to believe it's a debut ... The real pleasure is in the dry wit of Garmus's writing.'

'Every bit as brilliant as everyone is saying. Funny, clever, full of heart and wonderful characters. I loved it.'

Review by Ben Macnair (010123) Rating (8/10)

Review by Ben Macnair
Book Source: Not Known
Rating 8/10

The debut novel from Bonnie Garmus. Lessons in Chemistry is one of those books that splits opinions. It has won many fans, garnered five-star reviews across the board, and topped the best-seller lists, but the complaints about it are also legion.

There is something to be said for both sides. It is well written and the characters are all vibrant and well-drawn, but they, like the story, rely on over-used cliché and well-worn, some would say worn-out, tropes.

Spoiler Alert

Elizabeth Zott was a promising chemistry student in the early 1960s, but an encounter with a powerful teacher at her University puts her graduate career in doubt, and she finds herself years later working in a chemistry lab. Instead of leading a team, she is part of one, useful, but barely stretched to her limits.

It is here, though that she meets Cal Evans, the brilliant, Nobel award-nominated chemist, who sees something in Elizabeth that no one else recognises. Their first meeting is fraught, but soon they develop a devotion to each other, both as a pair in a rower’s team and in the chemistry lab, where the developing chemistry between the couple also causes problems of its own.

Although Elizabeth is often described as beautiful, it is her uncompromising nature, lack of respect for authority, and wanting to do things her way that leads to her eventual career. Elizabeth is widowed, Cal’s death is due to a tragic, accident, and she is left to bring up their daughter by herself. The need to make some money means that when a fellow child at her daughter’s school starts stealing her lunch, the encounter that Elizabeth has with the pupil’s father (a producer at a television studio looking for a hit show to lift it out of the doldrums) means that she is soon leading her own cookery programme, Supper at Six.

As the show progresses, beyond being a simple cookery show, to a must-watch show that blends science with cookery, Elizabeth’s none compromising nature means that many women see themselves in her, and wish for lives of their own, outside the kitchen and the home, Super at Six becomes a hit, Elizabeth becomes a celebrity, and her life, her past, and her future all become public property.

There are elements within the book that also speaks of Elizabeth’s struggles in the patriarchy of the 1960s. Her academic work is plagiarised, a boss passing off the work as his own, and the sexual harassment and flagrant disregard of some people also help to add to the colour and historical accuracy of the time. The book goes along at quite a pace, the story is not entirely linear, with many flashbacks to Elizabeth’s life in her childhood, her time at school, and at university, where her life took the first of its entirely unexpected turns.

There is much to commend the book, from the quickness of the pace, the writing style, and the strongly drawn and well-integrated characters, but its many strengths are also some of its weaknesses. With many of the loose ends tied up in the book, it becomes much more about wish fulfilment than a character study, but sometimes a book with a happy ending, and characters that we can all believe in, is what is needed.
Ben Macnair (1st January 2023)