Lessons in Chemistry is the first novel by Bonnie Garmus.
Finished on: 26.2.2025

Content Note: rape, sexualized violence, (critical treatment of) misogyny

Plot:
Elizabeth Zott was a promising chemist but after being sexually assaulted by her thesis advisor, she had to drop out of university, permanently derailing her career. Working as a lab technician, she meets Calvin Evans, hailed as the genius of chemistry. The two fall in love, but after an accident and with a baby on the way, Zott has to find a new path for herself yet again. Fate leads her to host a TV cooking show in a rather revolutionary way.

Lessons in Chemistry is rather entertaining, but it didn’t work quite as well for me as I had hoped. I had fun with it, but it is not a keeper for my bookshelves.

Lessons in Chemistry is much more a lesson in second wave feminism than anything else. There is not as much Chemistry in it as you’d might think, but Garmus finds a way to cover pretty much all the pitfalls of being a woman in the 50s and 60s, especially when trying to have a career, especially when this career is in the sciences. A lot of those pitfalls have since become more conspicous, less obvious and concrete, but they are still very present. Nobody will fire you anymore for becoming pregnant, for example, but not hire you? Coincidentally always promoting somebody else?

The book is at its best when it looks at the misogyny and sexism of the time. I found it less convincing when it switches the narrative perspective away from Elizabeth. In fact, the way it portrays the other characters and their inner lives often became a little grating for me. I found it unnecessary and distracting and often in those other perspectives like Gamus was trying too hard to be funny.

Never more so than when things revolve around Elizabeth’s dog, Six-Thirty, and her daughter Madeline. Both geniuses, of course. But even when a child is genius, it should still be a child. Madeline‘s kind of little adult precociousness i soften seen in media children, much rarely seen in dogs, but we get double whammy here and it was often annoying instead of charming to me.

That being said, the book is still worth reading for a lot of things, especially for Elizabeth herself (who reads neurodivergent/autistic to me, by the way) and the determined way that she faces all the challenges posed to her. I’m curious to check out the TV show, too – I didn’t even realize it existed until after I finished the book.

Summarizing: a good read, albeit not one that won me over completely.