Reviews

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Only show reviews with written explanations

katykelly's review against another edition

5.0

Invigorating, intelligent and laugh-out-loud entertaining.

This was just wonderful. Elizabeth Zott really is a literary heroine, she may not see her own wits as sparkling as Elizabeth Bennett's, or her passions as zealously portrayed as Catherine Earnshaw's, but Zott has wit, passion, mental fortitude and pluck enough to match any of them.

If I said to you this was a book about a woman who present a cookery show, you'd be wrong to conjure up Delia or Nigella in your head. Elizabeth Zott would be affronted. No, hers is a CHEMISTRY programme.

We rewind through Elizabeth's history, her hard-won battles to progress at all in a chemistry lab in 1960s America, where women are seen to only be in the workplace to snag a husband anyway. Her meeting with like-minded chemist Calvin Evans. A series of events that lead her to the front of a televisual lens and an audience of housewives used to being told they should keep their husbands happy with a good dinner. Right then.

A mould-breaker of a character, Zott affects those around her as well, and I could feel my cheeks glowing as I could see how one person really can change the world. Even if it is through casseroles.

She's just so logical and impossible to argue against: "...she didn't like the notion that systems had to be outsmarted. Why couldn't they just be smart in the first place?" And she's just a great role model: "Elizabeth simply refused to accept limits, not just for herself, but for others." There were a few lump-in-throat moments, I'll admit.

It's hard not to feel maddened and outraged at the attitudes and systems on display here: were these really the 'norm'? Regarding women in the workplace, the worth of the 'housewife', even how women treated each other. I hope we can see these as alien, six decades later, I really do.

A wealth of wonderful characters populate the book, from the central two chemists to their families and friends, acquaintances and colleagues. And a particularly smart canine, who also takes his share of the narration, rather winningly.

This gives insight into what the 60s was quite possibly like for many women. It also doesn't talk down to the reader or indeed Zott's audience when it delves into the science of cooking, and even made me think less harshly of the art/sport of rowing.

There are a lot of quotes you can pull from the book, the ones that make you chuckle, gasp, shake your head. Even the profound: "Wasn't that the very definition of life? Constant adaptations brought about by a series of never-ending mistakes?" One feels one could use this book as a life guide.

Endlessly entertaining, I stayed up late and woke up early to finish it. I'd read it again, and I hope against hope someone puts it on the screen. We need a bit of Zott in our lives.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.