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A review by kris_mccracken
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
2.0
I think there is the potential for a very good work of historical fiction here. However, for me, the recurrent anachronisms tended to disrupt the novel's coherence, undermining its historical accuracy and ultimately diminishing its credibility.
Perhaps if Garmus was happy to throw her lot in with a fuller work of farce, the book might have been more successful (to my mind). In choosing to maintain a sternly moralistic crusade on the role of women in science and, by extension, the modern world, the selective reconstruction of a time in many people's living memory becomes too heavy-handed and detracts from the immersive experience and hinders the book's broader cultural and social contexts.
Aside from four characters, every man in the book is an utterly irredeemable scoundrel (and two of these are profoundly weak-minded). If we count the dog, who is twice the man as all the men, we can make it five. Most of these men are vile misogynists who are only ever a hair's breadth away from rape.
While I can handle a bit of gilding the lily to make one's point, the constant shift between heavy-handed didacticism and nuanced evocation of a specific time and place is jarring in the extreme. Throw in yet another book (I am looking at you, [b:The Maid|55196813|The Maid|Nita Prose|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1643228739l/55196813._SY75_.jpg|86048177]) with a main character looking to make a virtue of neurodiversity (while failing to maintain any internal consistency of character), a dog that is more human than the bulk of the humans, a preternaturally intelligent four-year-old reading Norman Mailer and Vladimir Nabakov in 1959 (!), and I am struggling.
Not for me.
⭐ 1/2
Perhaps if Garmus was happy to throw her lot in with a fuller work of farce, the book might have been more successful (to my mind). In choosing to maintain a sternly moralistic crusade on the role of women in science and, by extension, the modern world, the selective reconstruction of a time in many people's living memory becomes too heavy-handed and detracts from the immersive experience and hinders the book's broader cultural and social contexts.
Aside from four characters, every man in the book is an utterly irredeemable scoundrel (and two of these are profoundly weak-minded). If we count the dog, who is twice the man as all the men, we can make it five. Most of these men are vile misogynists who are only ever a hair's breadth away from rape.
While I can handle a bit of gilding the lily to make one's point, the constant shift between heavy-handed didacticism and nuanced evocation of a specific time and place is jarring in the extreme. Throw in yet another book (I am looking at you, [b:The Maid|55196813|The Maid|Nita Prose|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1643228739l/55196813._SY75_.jpg|86048177]) with a main character looking to make a virtue of neurodiversity (while failing to maintain any internal consistency of character), a dog that is more human than the bulk of the humans, a preternaturally intelligent four-year-old reading Norman Mailer and Vladimir Nabakov in 1959 (!), and I am struggling.
Not for me.
⭐ 1/2