In Lessons in Chemistry Bonny Garmus has created a really entertaining and witty book with some really important social and cultural messages on gender equality, determination and courage, the uniting power of sport and importance of self-identity. The book does not get weighed down with such issues but remains light and easy to read drawing on observational humour throughout making it extremely relatable to the reader.
The protagonist, Elizabeth Zott is a chemist navigating her way through life in early 1960s America. Although being an obviously talented woman trying to succeed in her field of Chemistry, the world at that time truly did belong to men. The book raises themes of misogyny with serious incidents of sexual assault to casual stereotyping from both men and women.
Its more subtle messages can be found in drawing analogies of the principles of Chemistry to the journey of life including some humorous observations from the dog!
The book sees Elizabeth meet the love of her life, Calvin Evans, rescue an amazingly perceptive dog, lose the love of her life in a tragic (but almost comical) accident, have a baby out of wedlock, and consequently have to change her academic career to be the host of a cooking show.
Ironically it’s the cooking show and not her academic career where Elizabeth is really able to express herself and effect small changes in society, the “depression zone” cooking show opens a window to the world where her message to her fellow women can be heard.
Running throughout the book is also the theme of how important family and belonging can be in life; both Elizabeth and Calvin having challenging upbringings both craving a sense of belonging. The book ends happily for Elizabeth with perhaps the best message of all, that real family is found in more than just blood relatives.
The AJ_Book Club thoroughly enjoyed the Lessons in Chemistry and felt it raised a lot of issues we could relate to in a humorous way. Bonnie Garmus writes with ease and we never felt bogged down by the book at any stage or felt like we were being preached to. As a group of women, we felt the book highly relatable to life in 2023, many of the issues still being prevalent today despite laws existing to stop the kind of behaviours written about.
We liked the ending of the book and felt satisfied that Elizabeth found her ‘family’ to bring her some happiness in what essentially was quite a difficult and sad life.
We raised and discussed the important topic of whether dogs can actually learn words. We went on to exchange words our dogs knew. Bath, Bed, Biscuit, Walk, Ball were commonly known, but we weren’t sure our dogs had the 1000 word capacity of Six Thirty.
Some of us weren’t sure we would or could be friends with Elizabeth, maybe she would be too clever for us (or some of us). We felt maybe she was on the autism spectrum and acknowledged that we probably had some members that were also.
We discussed afternoon TV shows and wondered how many people had TVs back then, after a google search it turns out quite a lot! Looking a TV schedule from the 1960s we felt it no wonder the women were so enthused by Supper at Six as the choices were not great! We did wonder whether Elizabeth would have really inspired women to row or to become surgeons, but we allowed some poetic license in the book in order to make the point.
The power of sport to unite people from different genders, cultures and social backgrounds was something as sports enthusiasts we fully appreciated but none of us were tempted to join a rowing club or buy an erg. It sounded too much like hard work!
The book made us all think about chemistry in a different way, especially liking that we all share 99.6% of the same genes. Someone mentioned we have the same DNA as a banana but most of us weren’t sure how factually correct that was.
We liked the chemistry analogies throughout the book, and especially the quote “Courage is the root of change and change is what were chemically designed to do”.
A big thumbs up from the AJ Book Club – 5 stars.
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