Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Genre: Fiction, Women’s Literature

Keywords: Science, Women in STEM, Gender Roles, Family, Neurodivergence

This book is my first book club pick, and when I started I wasn’t too sure I was going to like it. It seemed like a typical nerdy boy meets nerdy girl love story, and I didn’t feel like I could really connect with Elizabeth Zott (the main character). But the more I read, I found that the story of Zott and her daughter, Madeline, was something so completely relatable that it is, honestly, disappointing.

Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant and no-nonsense chemist seems to have hit the jackpot. She is dating the world-famous fellow chemist Calvin Evans, they swap formulas and theories in their after-sex glow, and are the envy of the entire company. Not to mention their lovable, word-learning mutt named Six-Thirty. But, when Elizabeth’s life is flipped upside down, she is forced to learn how to live a life that she did not want. No chemistry job, no Calvin, and a daughter that she has no clue how to raise or connect with. Elizabeth takes a job hosting a cooking show to make ends meet, and her to-the-point attitude and insistence on doing things her own way soon brings the whole nation to the screen and the dinner table. To the chagrin of her superiors, Zott teaches the housewives of the 1950s the true value of their at-home jobs and shows them how to access their passions and potential as individuals. Elizabeth and Madeline do their best to change the world as they figure out their own identities, and their story is quirky, illuminating, and lovable!

Goodreads Synopsis

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with–of all things–her mind. True chemistry results.

But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.