Garmus deals with serious, complex and important issues in the vooks and, like Elizabeth Zott, doesn't shy away from them, but she does so with such wit and lightness of touch that the story sings throughout.Įlizabeth Zott is quirky, fierce and driven, uncompromising in her relationships with all in her orbit. If all this sounds like a rather dour business, don't worry.

One intriguiging sub plot in the book is her daughter Mad's own search for her place in the world. Away from the lab, and the television studio, Elizabeth Zott has other crosses to bear, including single parenthood at a time when such lifestyles were frowned upon and ownershp of the world's cleverest dog. She confronts the world on her own terms, refusing to cave to the unfairness of her situation and her intense frustration, but instead fighting for win every inch in her battle to be allowed to follow her professional path.ĭefeated in her early attempts to be a research scientist, Elizabeth Zott finds herself instead on television hosting a cooker show called Supper at Six in which she describes her cooking in chemical terms and speaks directly to her audience of women as intellectual equals rather than patronising them as 'just housewives' as the rest of the television industry does. And yet, Elizabeth Zott is nobody's victim. Hers is a world of insitutionalized misogny, of normalized sexual assault and of gender injustice of every kind. Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant 1950s (and 60s) chemist adrift in a male-dominated world that cannot and will not put any value on her ground-breaking work when it cannot be attributed to a man. It is so well conceived, so beautifully written, so charming, clever, funny and moving that the hesitancy was overcome by an urgent need to tell everyone to read it. Every so often I read a book that is so initimidatingly good that I am heistant to review because of the fear that my words could not do it justice.īonnie Garmus's debut novel is one such a book.

Lessons in chemistry reviews