Lessons in Chemistry ©2022 by Bonnie Garmus was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. I had heard good things about it, something about a woman chemist who hosted a scientific cooking show on television, titled Supper at Six. That seemed like an interesting premise and so when my local library acquired the book I added my name to the waiting list. At one point I was as far down as #17, but I did eventually rise to the top and checked out the book; after all if it was so popular it must be good, right? I recently completed it and to be honest I do not know what all the hoopla was about. Lessons in Chemistry engaged me enough to find it entertaining, but I give it a middle-of-the-road, three-star rating. It was kind of preachy about the unequal treatment and injustices to women in the 1950s and 1960s, and even though I know from experience that a large number of those practices still exist today, the book was heavy-handed in addressing the topic.
The cooking show part of the plot does not appear until about a third or more of the way into the book. There is a love affair that goes awry; to tell more about it would be a spoiler. I did love the spunk of Elizabeth Zott and the clueless arrogance of her love interest, Calvin Evans, also a brilliant chemist. Maybe I should have been more appreciative of the exaggerated caricaturing of the main characters, but truthfully I found them a bit ludicrous and ultimately, plain silly. A forward thinking dog with the name Six-Thirty, touting an extremely large human vocabulary for a canine, certainly adds a bit of frivolity to the mix once the reader suspends disbelief. Humorous lines and dialogues abounded, so the book was fun to read.
Even though
Lessons in Chemistry was about a genius chemist, rocket science it was not. It ended rather abruptly in the final few chapters.
Lessons in Chemistry did make me smile though, and so I rate it three stars. I do not regret having spent some leisure time reading it. I actually learned a bit of chemistry in the process. Abiogenesis however? Certainly we all know by now that those maggots did not spontaneously generate on that piece of spoiled meat. But abiogenesis is different and has never been neither proved nor disproved.
★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time
I was supposed to read this months ago for Book Club, but I'm still on the library wait list. I'll eventually read it and when I do, we can compare notes.
ReplyDeleteI finally had the chance to read this book. I rated it 4 stars, but I agree with most of what you wrote in your review. I also thought that the end was abrupt (sometimes I just wonder if the author got tired of writing!) and I also thought it was a fun, enjoyable book. Sometimes, I think my perception of a book and how much I like it is colored by the book I read right before it. If the prior book was dull and hard to read, but the current one isn't *as* dull and hard to read, then it automatically gets a higher rating from me. The book that I read prior to this one was Horse by Geraldine Brooks and it was one of those the books that was good enough, but I also couldn't wait to finish it so that I could read something more enjoyable.
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