I
have resisted reading this book, because it was basically the “It” book of
2022. Where
the Crawdads Sing was the last “It” book that I read, and it did
not live up to the hype. However, Lessons in Chemistry may well be the
funniest book I have ever read. Although
some tragic and horrifying events do occur in this novel, it is mostly the
triumphant story of Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1950s who is constantly
victimized by misogynists, particularly in the workplace. Being an unwed mother does not help, either,
but she lands a job as a TV chef, where she eschews all the trinkets that the
studio has provided as kitchen décor.
Instead, she treats cooking as science and even calls her home kitchen
the “lab”—not exactly a misnomer, since it contains a centrifuge, beakers, and
a Bunsen burner. In one episode, she
advises cutting slits in the top crust of chicken pot pie and describes how it
will otherwise behave like Mt. Vesuvius.
The fact is that she is a terrific cook and beautiful as well, but her
TV show largely focuses on empowering women to believe in themselves and what
they can accomplish and shed stereotypes.
She also has a dog whose vocabulary numbers in the hundreds and an
extremely precocious four-year-old daughter who stuns the kindergarten
librarian by asking for books by Norman Mailer.
Of course, not everyone is as brilliant as Elizabeth, her daughter, and
her dog, and I expect that some people will be turned off by Elizabeth’s attitude,
which borders on arrogance. I, however,
as well as her fictional TV viewers, found her to be delightful, inspiring and
courageous, although at times overly forthcoming. What TV personality in her right mind would
offer that she’s an atheist in the 1950s?
Speaking of the 1950s, I loved all the references to that era’s popular
TV fixtures, such as the Jack LaLanne
Show and The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Garmus’s writing style, in addition to
provoking laugh-out-loud responses, felt sort of breathless, or maybe that was
just my reaction to the zippy pace of the novel. I hope the author has another book in her
with a heroine who leaps off the page like Elizabeth Zott does.
