Lessons in Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Fiction

2022 Random House Audio

Read by Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus and Pandora Sykes

Finished on May 5, 2022

Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

A delight for readers of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this blockbuster debut set in 1960s California features the singular voice of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show.

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 as an average woman. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes 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.

But 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.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.

I suspect I'm an outlier in that I didn't love this debut novel nearly as much as my fellow bloggers. It took me several chapters to get interested and once Elizabeth's life took an unexpected turn, Six-Thirty (a stray dog named for the time he entered Calvin and Elizabeth's life) became a distraction with his internal monologue. I don't usually mind when a dog has a voice in a novel (The Art of Racing in the Rain and A Dog's Purpose are two of my favorite books featuring dogs), but Six-Thirty's grated on my nerves. I was also annoyed with the reader's mispronunciation of Jack LaLanne's name. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always thought it was La-Lane, not La-lan. (I even watched a couple of old videos of his TV show and I'm pretty sure I'm correct.) Those quibbles aside, it wasn't until Elizabeth landed her job as the host of "Supper at Six" that I became fully engaged. I can appreciate the themes of women's inequality in the workplace, feminism, misogyny, and I liked the main female characters, but overall I was underwhelmed.