Lessons In Chemistry

LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY

by Bonnie Garmus

 

Award: Goodreads Winner 2022

 

Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2023

 

Date Read: April 11, 2023

 

This a very unique novel, just as its heroine, Elizabeth Zott. Garmus brilliantly brings the worlds of chemistry, love, feminism, cooking shows and pet ownership into a beautiful salad bowl and tosses. What comes out is an empowering and hopeful novel about the bonds of family.

 

Elizabeth Zott is struggling to find her way through the male-dominated chemistry world. Clearly gifted and brilliant, she lacks the one, most important component: no, not a B.S. – a penis. In the 1960s, women in science were just about unheard of and no one took them seriously. Elizabeth has endured sexual assault, humiliation, demeaning job duties and a general lack of respect, yet she’s determined to remain true to her life love: chemistry.

 

Winding up at the Hastings Institute, she meets and (despite her stealing his beakers and him barfing on her) falls in love with Calvin Evans, an elite chemist who runs his own lab and has been nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize. Although they move in together, causing quite the scandal, and adopt a dog, 6:30, becoming their own version of a family, Calvin wants to make it official and get married. Elizabeth categorically refuses. She loves him but does not want to subsume her own identity behind that of her husband. All of her accomplishments in the world of chemistry would be overshadowed by her husband’s fame. No way.

 

One afternoon, on a run with 6:30, Calvin is killed in a freak accident. He left behind a present in the form of a baby Elizabeth is unaware she’s carrying. When the Institute finds out, they fire her for immorality and Elizabeth is forced to consult her old institute colleagues as a way to make ends meet, which is barely enough.

 

Thanks to the help of a kind neighbor, Harriet, and 6:30, Elizabeth is able to pursue her original research and slowly adapts to the horror of new motherhood. When Madeleine “Mad” is able to attend kinder, there is a continuous kerfuffle about other kids eating Mad’s lunch. Her classmate Amanda seems to be swiping Mad’s lunch and through parent-teacher conferences, she meets Amanda’s father, Walter. Walter works at KCTV as a producer.

 

When faced with an empty afternoon time slot, he comes upon the novel idea of a cooking show with Elizabeth Zott as the star. From the get-go, she hates the idea but only comes on board after realizing she could teach women that they are capable and that cooking is nothing but chemistry. Walter and the studio execs fail to reign her in and the show is more about chemistry than cooking. The female audience eats it up. <pun intended> Supper At Six becomes a runaway success and becomes nationally syndicated.

 

Also in the mix is Calvin’s birth mother trying to locate her granddaughter. Both of Calvin’s parents were killed when he was young, as well as an aunt who took custody of him after his parents died. He was ultimately sent to a Catholic boy’s home where he endured untold abuse. In reality, he was stolen from his birth mom because she was an unwed mother and she has spent her entire life trying to find him.

 

What she finds instead is Mad. And Elizabeth’s make-shift family grows even larger.

 

I was prepared for this to be a fun, vacation read and was pleasantly surprised by the intelligence of the chemistry aspect (and maybe even learned a thing or two), the heart of the characters and the uniqueness of the plot. I was somewhat put off by 6:30’s dialogue but I often imagine my dog can mentally communicate too, so I can’t necessarily be a hypocrite about that. 

My ultimate take-away, though, is how much women had to endure when they were powerless and second-class citizens. America seems to be having a regressive moment where women’s rights are being threatened but hopefully the strides we have made over the last 60 years won’t be completely erased. The complete misogyny they faced goes hand-in-hand with the sexual violence perpetrated against them, another way to remind them of who holds the power. For the first time I grasped why sexual violence against women is still so out of control.