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A review by brennanaphone
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Did not finish book.
I only made it about a quarter of the way through. For all that it's touting progressive values in an unprogressive era, it sure does frame Elizabeth as "not like other girls," often cruelly at the expense of tertiary female characters who are focused on the "wrong" things. Also, no one speaks like a person; it's all rhetoric from a modern lens meant to critique the backward beliefs of the 1960s. Much like Light from Uncommon Stars, I agree with the sentiment but find the execution unbelievable and incredibly boring. There are no characters, only Lessons to Be Learn.
Just a heads up, I found the graphic rape scene tonally jarring and largely unexamined, and I would like to give a trigger warning for that. Overall just hamfisted, didactic, and intent on treating its readers like idiots (and ignoring the fact that other feminists did indeed live in the 1960s; they looked almost nothing like this model-beautiful, unfiltered white liberal fantasy of feminism; and the patriarchal society they pushed back against was not just cartoonish misogynists but a complex and insidious structure of invisible privilege and punishment that continues to this day).
Just a heads up, I found the graphic rape scene tonally jarring and largely unexamined, and I would like to give a trigger warning for that. Overall just hamfisted, didactic, and intent on treating its readers like idiots (and ignoring the fact that other feminists did indeed live in the 1960s; they looked almost nothing like this model-beautiful, unfiltered white liberal fantasy of feminism; and the patriarchal society they pushed back against was not just cartoonish misogynists but a complex and insidious structure of invisible privilege and punishment that continues to this day).