Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

I was rather late to the party with this one!! I’d heard about it months ago, I’d read the rave reviews but for some reason it just didn’t appeal.  And then it was chosen as the monthly choice for the book club that I am in. I wasn’t that thrilled but prepared to give it a go as I have done with many other books and …. surprisingly, I found that I actually rather enjoyed it despite it being very different to the books that I normally choose to read.

The book focusses on the life of Elizabeth Zott. It is set in the early 1960s, a time when women were not treated as intellectual equals. In the workforce, women were accepted as a secretary, cleaner or tea maker but not as scientists!

Elizabeth works within the all male team at the Hastings Research Institute who have no understanding whatsoever of equality and treat Elizabeth with disdain. She has to source her own equipment and materials and work without support. She also has to be careful, as her male colleagues are not unknown to steal the credit for her research and investigations.

Here she meets Calvin Evans an equally unconventional intellectual with a brilliant mind. Despite being Nobel prize nominated with the option to work anywhere in the world, he has chosen to work at the Hastings Institute as there are good rowing facilities nearby.  Calvin falls deeply in love with Elizabeth’s mind and so begins their extraordinary and unusual love story.  They quite simply are soul mates. They have an unconventional and quirky relationship but it works. Despite a proposal, Elizabeth refuses to marry Calvin as she wants her work to be accepted as hers and she wants to be seen as an independent scientist rather than hanging onto her husband's coat tails.

Elizabeth and Calvin live together in their own unique way, adopt a dog named Six Thirty and have a daughter called Mad. But life is unpredictable and tragically, Elizabeth finds herself alone – a single mum who needs to work. After her daughter is bullied at school, Elizabeth approaches the father of the child involved and ends up being offered a role on America’s much loved cooking show – ‘Supper at Six.’ It is as far removed from Elizabeth’s lifestyle as it can possibly be. She refuses to conform to the norm, accept the direction of her bosses and basically do as she is told. Treating cooking as a science and using complex chemical terms, Elizabeth produces a show that is as unique as her. Slowly her following grows due to her blunt honest comments on marriage, religion, society norms and the role of women, which has her superiors tearing their hair out. She is empowering women – giving them the strength and courage to do what they have always wanted to do, to go against the wishes of their husbands and to stand up and be counted.

With the help of her neighbour the delightful Harriet Sloane, her producer Walter Pine and her doctor, Doctor Mason, Elizabeth reluctantly creates a highly successful show. Problems arise when Mad is asked to produce a family tree for her homework which pushes her to search through her father’s past and ultimately uncovers many long kept secrets.

This is a really unusual book with a fabulous collection of quirky characters including a talking dog! It was the debut novel of Bonnie Garmus and quickly became a multi-million copy best seller. It is also now being screened on Apple TV. Although it took me a little while to get into the storyline, I fell in love with the characters and was willing Elizabeth on through all her battles. There was also  admiration for her strength and belief in her own abilities,  her determination to succeed by her own actions and her desire to be credited for those actions. I was actively cheering her on when she was speaking to her female audience during the filming of the TV show, despite the frantic efforts of her superiors to stop her, encouraging them to change the Status Quo and to follow their dreams.  We could probably all do with a little bit of Elizabeth in our lives!