Lessons in Chemistry

 
I always approach books that are mega-bestsellers or prestigious prize winners with a great deal of caution, sometimes only reading them after the initial buzz has died down.
 
Books that have garnered excessive or lavish praise tend to make me wary, as I’ve read far too many that have failed to move me as they did others as they can be filled with experimental styles, artful manipulation of the reader and often a sense of the author’s own self-aggrandisement. I couldn’t get into the famous “Wolf Hall” trilogy by Hilary Mantel, although I am assured by other readers who are far more intellectual than me that it is brilliant if one can deal with the difficult prose. I disliked “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” and “A Gentleman in Moscow” for their skewed history, and “Where the Crawdads Sing” was a shocker, for too many reasons to list here. “Gone Girl” left me fuming.
 
Hence, I bought a copy of “Lessons in Chemistry” with some foreboding that once again I’d find myself swimming against the tide of opinion. And to some degree I am - baffled, yet unsurprised, by its success.
 
I won’t take up space with the storyline here, as countless others have reviewed this book and you can read all the five-star gush in newspapers, magazines, book blogs and sites like Goodreads. I see there is a mini-series on the way as well.
 
In a nutshell, in the 1950s, Elizabeth Zott is a frustrated chemist who becomes a TV cook and inspires feminism in her viewers. Prior to this, she has endless problems with the male hierarchy in science institutions, falls in love with a fellow outsider, Calvin Evans, has his illegitimate daughter, Mad(eline), owns a dog called Six-Thirty, and with her stubbornness, insensitivity and incapacity for conciliation is often her own worse enemy in her handling of other people. Sure, she is justified in getting her own back on sexual assaults, stolen research, and religious folk, but she is hardly a character that you warm to.
 
I’ve never liked novels (or movies) with overly smart kids, so I was off on the wrong foot with Mad, who is unbelievably precocious, reading adult books and having adult philosophical discussions from the age of four. Really! The dog, who regularly gives his opinions on life, is more schmaltz that is beyond ridiculous.
 
Is this book supposed to be funny and charming, as so many have described it as? Sure, there are a few one-liners that made me smile, but this isn’t funny, not with all the accidental deaths, suicide, rapes, child abuse and deceits that comprise the backgrounds of the various characters.
 
Is it insightful, a comment on the early struggle for women’s rights? Partly, but being of an age to remember the 1950s and 1960s, there is much here that smacks of 21st Century feminist “wokeism” and doesn’t really get women of that era. There are many women who successfully managed to negotiate male-dominated professional careers back in those days. (Just this week, I read the respectful obituary in the British press of one of them who I admired and worked closely with in the 1960s. She was a trailblazer in her profession and, while never a shrinking violet nor acquiescent victim, she had an impressively dignified way of standing up to the men in higher office as she proved her worth.)
 
The research into chemistry and rowing (the most boring parts for me) might be impressive, but there are historical anachronisms that have slipped through.
 
In spite of all this, the book was an interesting, if somewhat frustrating, read and thus memorable in its way, but I can only give it a borderline three stars.

 
Amazon.com (audio)
 
Amazon.co.uk (Kindle)
 
Booktopia (paperback)

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