Lessons in Chemistry: The multi-million-copy bestseller

Product Information

In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. With the help of her “wise beyond her years” child, her overachieving dog, and a community of wonderful supporting characters, Elizabeth Zott-may just “change the world” one “thirty minute lesson at a time”! Also working at Hastings is Calvin Evans, a brilliant Noble prize nominee who has his very own massive lab where he can do who knows what and win more accolades. One major scene and plot point deals with sexual assault, and I just wish it hadn’t gone allllllll the way there.

This is one of those books that reminds us we can absolutely do anything we put our minds to, even in the face of challenging circumstances. Although Lessons in Chemistry involves extremely important societal issues, the storytelling is phenomenal. The 2nd half of the book was a little better than the first and it had a more positive ending at least. I get that she is supposed to be super intelligent and 'quirky' but she doesn't feel like a real person for much of the book, there is nothing to connect to.

They were happy, even though Elizabeth rejected marrying him because she wanted to become an independent scientist without being acknowledged for her husband's contributions. In a couple of episodes of the programme, I glimpsed what a good implementation of the chemistry conceit might look like (the one with potato skin and glycoalkaloids was good), but too often it's cringe - particularly the extended metaphor around 'bonds' or the book's steadfast conviction that saying 'we had chemistry' is a deep and powerful statement.

Elizabeth Zott is the ideal, amazingly beautiful, shockingly intelligent white woman who is discriminated against due to her gender, and her feminist “rants” reek of privilege. This is the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club July 2022 selection and a Summer Reading Guide Minimalist Pick. The book zips from really dark subjects like rape and abuse to light somewhat farcical subjects like teaching a dog English or Elizabeth becoming an amazing rower by studying physics (women can smart their way into being better than six foot athletic men at everything because saying they can't is sexist, yo). That is, until Calvin Evans, another brilliant chemist, comes along and really sees all that she is capable of. I had misgivings going into this, because its premise is 'one fierce woman in the 1960s uses her cooking show to teach the housewives of America what they're worth,' and that's a big white feminist fantasy red flag to me.One of her viewers, a housewife with five kids, goes and becomes a doctor solely because Elizabeth is like 'yeah, sure, you can do that. Also don't get me started about her daughter and how intelligent and advanced she was at a ridiculously young age. I loved the author's extra-intelligent, dark, original sense of humor, and I fell in love with her characters. The story of Elizabeth brought out so many complex feelings: I laughed, I got angry, I cried, I sighed, I laughed again, and as soon as I finished the last chapter, I gave my ovation! Almost every other woman in this story is presented as catty, conniving and simple-minded (because they all believe in God, which this book hammers in that only total airheads do) except for our main character because she's not like the other girls.

Elizabeth is quite simply fabulous, I love her and want to be her but I’ll certainly need to mug up on the chemistry! She is working at the Hastings Institute performing a job that she is completely over qualified for! A bit of a rebel, smart as a whip, she speaks her mind without holding back, and believes in what's right. So this book is a white liberal's dream: a woman blithely advocating gender and racial equality in a book with no characters of colour, where structural prejudice falls away if you're smart and correct and righteous enough. This is a remarkable, hilarious and unforgettable debut from Garmus, outrageously entertaining, with oodles of charm, and I have no doubt that this will be a runaway success on publication.

She relies HEAVILY on negative stereotypes of the Catholic Church to prove her point that religion is ignorant, and I’m just tired of this argument.