A spoiler-free review of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – A witty and heartbreaking historical fiction novel with big themes of feminism.
If you haven’t heard about the book, which has been all over Booktok and Bookstagram, then you’ve probably heard about the limited series of the same name currently streaming on Apple TV. For some reason, I had it in my head that I wasn’t going to like Lessons in Chemistry, I also had it in my head that this was a romance. This IS NOT a romance, no romance would have me sobbing in bed at 2 AM like this book did. Thanks to book club for forcing me to read this book, which ended up being a four star read for me and one of my favorite reads of 2023.
Elizabeth Zott is a chemist and star of a wildly popular cooking show Supper at Six, she’s also a single mother in the 1960s who’s never been married and has a dog with a very large vocabulary. In other words, she’s different. Lessons in Chemistry follows Elizabeth through her troubled career as a chemist and her whirl wind romance with fellow chemist Calvin Evans, which devastatingly comes to a tragic end early on. Elizabeth is left to raise their daughter with the help of their dog Six-Thirty and their friends who become family. In need of money to support her daughter, Elizabeth reluctantly takes the role as the star of a new cooking show for housewives called Supper at Six. She is expected to portray herself as a sexy housewife while teaching women across the country how to put dinner on the table in thirty minutes, but Elizabeth has something else in mind.
While I really liked this book and so did many others, a lot of people absolutely hated it. From reading a bunch of other reviews on Good Reads here are some reasons why:
- Misrepresentation of chemists, errors on the chemistry mentioned in the book. A lot of people HATED how Elizabeth (the main character) has a tendency to talk in chemical formulas or refer to common kitchen/houshold items as their scientific name, for example referring to water as H2O or to salt as Sodium Chloride (which is criticized by other characters in the book.) If you are going into this an actual chemist or scientist, I’m sure you will find inaccuracies and totally understand how you might find Elizabeth Zott hard to relate to. For me this wasn’t an issue and while I didn’t exactly find her relatable I was entertained by her and did feel for her as a character.
- Unrealistic representation of feminism in the time period/ naive feminism. While I get this, and it does bring to mind Claire from Outlander. A character who literally traveled in time and inserted her 1940s ideas on feminism (which were really more like 21st century ideas) into her life and relationships in 1700s Scotland. While it doesn’t actually make the most sense and can sometimes feel exhausting, I do believe that some women with radical feminist ideas did have to exist in these eras and be loud about them for real progress to have been made. Overall, I was just entertained by this book, and tried to treat it as just that – an entertaining piece of fiction.
- Underrepresentation of women and people of color. I totally agree with this criticism. I truly don’t think any non-white characters were mentioned in this entire book and that is a problem. I think lack of representation of these characters takes away from the message about feminism as whole.
- Anthropomorphism of the dog. I absolutely disagree with this critisizm. I loved Six-Thirty and his large vocabulary – he was my absolute favorite character. As a reader of mostly horror, it was nice to read something where the dog killed in a horrific way.
- Loud Atheism. This personally doesn’t bother me at all, because as Elizabeth Zott says, “I’m an atheist. Actually a humanist. But I have to admit, some days the human race makes me sick.” While the ideas on religion line up with my views, pretty much exactly, there is a lot of talk about atheism and some conversation arguing the existence of God and need for religion. So it’s understandable how this could upset people with different views. The author obviously has strong feelings on this, and that is clear through multiple characters.
- It’s not funny. I found this novel more entertaining than funny, although I did think it was witty and hopeful. I think the problem most people had, was that this book was marketed as “laugh out loud funny” while in reality it was also heartbreaking and dealt with some very heavy stuff. There is a rape scene, domestic violence, sexual assault, misogyny, death and suicide. All which I was not expecting going into this read. This book is heartbreaking, this book is unfair, but I also thought it was resilient and hopeful and told in a very witty and entertaining way.
When I finished this book and put it down, it was a five star read for me. I found it very entertaining and easy to read. The writing was spectacular and read like a movie, so there’s so surprise that it ended up as a limited series. As with everything I read, when it’s time to revisit it and come up with a review, I also end up analyzing things more closely and as many people have pointed out in their reviews there are some problematic themes here. My hope is always that authors will take this feedback from readers and use it to improve their future writing. This is my hope for Bonnie Garmus because I did really enjoy this book overall and would be excited to read whatever she comes out with next.
If you’ve read this already, what did you think? Did you love it or hate it?