2023 #38: Lessons in Chemistry (Garmus)

 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As I began reading this book, I was prepared to wind up with a "meh" for an overall review. I was wrong.
Elizabeth Zott is a heroine in her own time, and ours. We need not work hard to translate the sexist transgressions of the 50s and 60s to today. Maybe we don't fully identify with Elizabeth, but Garmus provides Calvin, Harriet, Mad, Walter, and even Six-Thirty to fill in the gaps. Writing omniscient narration for the dog provided something more than whimsy. There's truth in animal sense. Six-Thirty is the sage observer, and the little windows we get into Six-Thirty's mind are sometimes as heart-wrenching as they are smile-inducing.

I am mildly sympathetic to the fatigue expressed by some regarding feminists being cast as social misfits, but I feel this particular character is a real opportunity to understand neurodiversity and how one's calling and focus can shape how they relate to the world. This is why Calvin and Elizabeth find each other. I can also see how some expected an easy beach read, but discovered some really crushing scenes of the terrifying reality that many women face. Garmus owes no one an apology, from my perspective. It is exactly that these scenes are interwoven into more comical and lighthearted engagement that makes this such an excellent book. The cover's mid-century vintage design might belie the true nature of the book, but isn't that the entire point? It encapsulates the status of women in the 1950s it its use of that art.

There are yes, a few bra-burning clichés of feminist narratives, but they are used sparingly and with care toward the protagonist's character, so they seem plausible and less like clichés. What appears at first to be the central relationship of the book, is soon supplanted by a "it takes a village" story that includes villagers with secrets and skeletons aplenty, but who are ultimately so human in their stumbling and bumbling and sometimes successful attempts at growth.

An absolute favorite book for me.

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