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A review by gajanperry
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
1.75
CW: spoilers, discussion of traumatic themes of the text (inc. sexual violence)
Had been wanting to read this since I was buying books from the op shop a few months ago and I asked the volunteer ringing up my items what she was reading and she said that it was called "Chemistry Lessons" and that I wouldn't like it because "it's a feminist book" and "not for boys".
Well, she doesn't know this boy. And, regardless, this is not a feminist book.
Gave this two stars because it very frankly illustrates institutional and historical sexism, sexual assault, violence, and the underappreciation and appropriation of women's contributions to academia and science in a way that is undoubtedly extremely validating in a cultural environment where these stories are still not acknowledged or accepted in the mainstream, and poorly represented in media or literature. Also, bizarrely, in spite of the often horrific themes, it is as two reviews on the front cover say, often "laugh out loud" funny.
Otherwise, I'd have to put it in my bottom four novels I've read this year.
There seems to be a trend in popular fiction at the moment towards books which are written primarily with the intention to depict scenes of trauma, victimisation, and repression which preempt the narrative itself. This is fine, but it's a slippery slope to character development which then serves only to advance the thematic narratives premised by those events.
SpoilerEvery character in this book is a total dope, except for Elizabeth (the protagonist) and her daughter (whose official given name is Mad for some absurdly contrived quirk of events that I can't remember, and is nicknamed Madeleine in an entirely pointless way). My major gripe with the text is how it relies upon mockery and shaming of all of the other female characters as some sort of means of emphasising Elizabeth's suffering and centreing her as the solo hero of the story and a perfectly socially formed and informed woman who enters the story as being arbitrarily and automatically evolved beyond everyone else, only to experience every kind of horror imaginable. Each woman who follows in the narrative, from the kind older neighbour in a loveless marriage to a total creep who she shows no inclination to leave to the upstart HR rep to Mad's preschool teacher, is depicted as a siren for internalised misogyny in a variety of helpless and largely unresolved ways. None of them seem to possess any redeeming qualities whatsoever and don't seem to experience any kind of individual personal development which might emancipate them from their terrible lives, except for the HR person who does a completely unexplained aboutface from eagerly enforcing the horrific gender discrimination of the research lab where Elizabeth works (inc firing her for getting pregnant while unmarried) to disappearing from the text completely and then returning as the head of the whole company having, out of nowhere, arisen to be a completely unproblematic paragon of everything Elizabeth has been fighting for throughout the text.
The men are even worse. I'm all for trashing male characters but once again the only function any of them seem to serve is Elizabeth's aggrandisement. They're either downright awful in everything they do (this is fine) to being, at best, a bumbling, well meaning fool who is inexorably casually sexist in a way that is acceptable because it gives Elizabeth everything she needs. Confusingly, this seems to extend even to Calvin, the supposed Nobel-level genius love of Elizabeth's life, who she falls in love with something like one or two interactions after he mistakes her for a lab assistant rather than a scholar in her own right because he genuinely had never before comprehended that a woman could be a chemist. Such is his incompetence that he manages to die through circumstances so ridiculous that I'm pretty sure no person fictional or otherwise could outdo it, and it's somehow explained away as being his own fault.
If it was a real thing, I'd probably find the chemistry-themed cooking show Elizabeth eventually hosts to be kitschy and fun. Somehow, written as it is with the boundless scope of fiction, achieving the required suspension of disbelief is even less plausible. It's not so much the idea of the show itself, but the emphasis of an audience of dronelike women across America somehow experiencing some kind of internal revolution on the basis of watching a cooking program where the host refuses to speak in any kind of plain English, referring to any and all ingredients by their chemical compound name, from sodium chloride to acetic acid, because they've never been allowed to aspire to any kind of education or learning or original thought themselves beforehand. Again, if anything, it comes across as rather more paternalistic and condescending, as Elizabeth asserts herself as a moral lone ranger and the only woman to demonstrate any kind of intelligence or independent thinking in the text, which seems to be an asset with is intended to place her as equal to any of the male foes who undermine her career but also as superior to all of the women and thus predestined to free them from their own shackles through the liberating language of chemistry. Eventually this expands to Mad as well, who of course clocks the entirety of the local library's collection before her fifth birthday, and wages a victorious ideological war again her aforementioned ignorant and stupid teacher who tries to stop her from reading academic level texts.
I'm not sure what purpose the rowing narrative was meant to serve, other than to show Elizabeth's savant like understanding of physics translating to an intuitive understanding of the fundamental mechanics of the sport and bypassing the need for any kind of training to accelerate straight to being a rep level rower.
Which leads me nicely to what is undoubtedly the worst part of this book. The fucking dog. I'm trying to think of a single story of any kind where inserting a dog which is able to read would improve the narrative. I hate the term Mary Sue for various reasons, but inspite of being able to stand by my refusal to ever use it even in the face of Elizabeth's superiority through literal unfallibity in everything else she attempts in this book, like the rowing, I cannot excuse the dog, who again seems to just serve the purpose of elevating Elizabeth to being more interesting and capable than everyone else in a way ordained by fate. Firstly, the dog, which for intensely uninteresting reasons is named "Six Thirty" basically kills Calvin. The mourning process then awakens it to its own humanoid intelligence such that Elizabeth is able to teach it to read and understand over 1000 words not simply as commands, but on a dialectical level. The dog again transcends the morality of every other character in the text aside from Elizabeth and Mad, purely for the purpose of emphasising the difference to everyone else's wilful ignorance.
I really wanted to like this one, truly. And I did in many parts. But overall this is not a well written book, and much less a feminist one.
Had been wanting to read this since I was buying books from the op shop a few months ago and I asked the volunteer ringing up my items what she was reading and she said that it was called "Chemistry Lessons" and that I wouldn't like it because "it's a feminist book" and "not for boys".
Well, she doesn't know this boy. And, regardless, this is not a feminist book.
Gave this two stars because it very frankly illustrates institutional and historical sexism, sexual assault, violence, and the underappreciation and appropriation of women's contributions to academia and science in a way that is undoubtedly extremely validating in a cultural environment where these stories are still not acknowledged or accepted in the mainstream, and poorly represented in media or literature. Also, bizarrely, in spite of the often horrific themes, it is as two reviews on the front cover say, often "laugh out loud" funny.
Otherwise, I'd have to put it in my bottom four novels I've read this year.
There seems to be a trend in popular fiction at the moment towards books which are written primarily with the intention to depict scenes of trauma, victimisation, and repression which preempt the narrative itself. This is fine, but it's a slippery slope to character development which then serves only to advance the thematic narratives premised by those events.
SpoilerEvery character in this book is a total dope, except for Elizabeth (the protagonist) and her daughter (whose official given name is Mad for some absurdly contrived quirk of events that I can't remember, and is nicknamed Madeleine in an entirely pointless way). My major gripe with the text is how it relies upon mockery and shaming of all of the other female characters as some sort of means of emphasising Elizabeth's suffering and centreing her as the solo hero of the story and a perfectly socially formed and informed woman who enters the story as being arbitrarily and automatically evolved beyond everyone else, only to experience every kind of horror imaginable. Each woman who follows in the narrative, from the kind older neighbour in a loveless marriage to a total creep who she shows no inclination to leave to the upstart HR rep to Mad's preschool teacher, is depicted as a siren for internalised misogyny in a variety of helpless and largely unresolved ways. None of them seem to possess any redeeming qualities whatsoever and don't seem to experience any kind of individual personal development which might emancipate them from their terrible lives, except for the HR person who does a completely unexplained aboutface from eagerly enforcing the horrific gender discrimination of the research lab where Elizabeth works (inc firing her for getting pregnant while unmarried) to disappearing from the text completely and then returning as the head of the whole company having, out of nowhere, arisen to be a completely unproblematic paragon of everything Elizabeth has been fighting for throughout the text.
The men are even worse. I'm all for trashing male characters but once again the only function any of them seem to serve is Elizabeth's aggrandisement. They're either downright awful in everything they do (this is fine) to being, at best, a bumbling, well meaning fool who is inexorably casually sexist in a way that is acceptable because it gives Elizabeth everything she needs. Confusingly, this seems to extend even to Calvin, the supposed Nobel-level genius love of Elizabeth's life, who she falls in love with something like one or two interactions after he mistakes her for a lab assistant rather than a scholar in her own right because he genuinely had never before comprehended that a woman could be a chemist. Such is his incompetence that he manages to die through circumstances so ridiculous that I'm pretty sure no person fictional or otherwise could outdo it, and it's somehow explained away as being his own fault.
If it was a real thing, I'd probably find the chemistry-themed cooking show Elizabeth eventually hosts to be kitschy and fun. Somehow, written as it is with the boundless scope of fiction, achieving the required suspension of disbelief is even less plausible. It's not so much the idea of the show itself, but the emphasis of an audience of dronelike women across America somehow experiencing some kind of internal revolution on the basis of watching a cooking program where the host refuses to speak in any kind of plain English, referring to any and all ingredients by their chemical compound name, from sodium chloride to acetic acid, because they've never been allowed to aspire to any kind of education or learning or original thought themselves beforehand. Again, if anything, it comes across as rather more paternalistic and condescending, as Elizabeth asserts herself as a moral lone ranger and the only woman to demonstrate any kind of intelligence or independent thinking in the text, which seems to be an asset with is intended to place her as equal to any of the male foes who undermine her career but also as superior to all of the women and thus predestined to free them from their own shackles through the liberating language of chemistry. Eventually this expands to Mad as well, who of course clocks the entirety of the local library's collection before her fifth birthday, and wages a victorious ideological war again her aforementioned ignorant and stupid teacher who tries to stop her from reading academic level texts.
I'm not sure what purpose the rowing narrative was meant to serve, other than to show Elizabeth's savant like understanding of physics translating to an intuitive understanding of the fundamental mechanics of the sport and bypassing the need for any kind of training to accelerate straight to being a rep level rower.
Which leads me nicely to what is undoubtedly the worst part of this book. The fucking dog. I'm trying to think of a single story of any kind where inserting a dog which is able to read would improve the narrative. I hate the term Mary Sue for various reasons, but inspite of being able to stand by my refusal to ever use it even in the face of Elizabeth's superiority through literal unfallibity in everything else she attempts in this book, like the rowing, I cannot excuse the dog, who again seems to just serve the purpose of elevating Elizabeth to being more interesting and capable than everyone else in a way ordained by fate. Firstly, the dog, which for intensely uninteresting reasons is named "Six Thirty" basically kills Calvin. The mourning process then awakens it to its own humanoid intelligence such that Elizabeth is able to teach it to read and understand over 1000 words not simply as commands, but on a dialectical level. The dog again transcends the morality of every other character in the text aside from Elizabeth and Mad, purely for the purpose of emphasising the difference to everyone else's wilful ignorance.
I really wanted to like this one, truly. And I did in many parts. But overall this is not a well written book, and much less a feminist one.