Trigger warning: Rape
I have to say that I really enjoyed this novel, but after a while it dragged for me. I loved the characters of Elizabeth and Calvin, but the book started to feel flat to me after [incident] and then it just felt a bit like it spun it’s wheels til we synched up with how Elizabeth got her cooking show. And I won’t lie, Elizabeth is hard to like at times while reading. I think that Garmus was going for her being what I assume is on the autism spectrum, but initially the book didn’t describe or show her that way. It just felt off to me towards the end she didn’t take the meaning of words and was getting confused by what people meant. Maybe because I have read the entire series of The Maid by Nita Prose that I just wasn’t in the mood for another woman who needed the people around her to describe feelings and other things for her to get them (or in this case to still not get them). Then the book hit it’s groove again for me. I do have to say that I thought the ending wrapping things up neatly just didn’t feel true to what we had been given before and shown. I am happy for Elizabeth though, she and Mad needed a win there.
Lessons in Chemistry tells us the story of Elizabeth Zott. The book starts off talking about a successful cooking show and the cook, Elizabeth Zott. We know Elizabeth has a daughter named Madeline and that she’s very focused on leaving her notes in her lunch and making sure her lunches are nutritionally balanced. And then the book jumps to the past and we see a younger Elizabeth that wants to be seen for her brain and wants to do revolutionary things in the field of chemistry. It’s hard to do though since it’s 1960s in the U.S. and most women if they go to college are only there to get their MRS. degree. And most of the men that Elizabeth meets only think about one thing when they see her, and it’s not her brain. When she meets, befriends, and eventually falls for Calvin Evans who is well known in the scientific community. Incident occurs and we then see where and how Elizabeth went from working in a lab to the cooking show. We also get to meet some wonderful characters like her TV producer Walter Pine and her neighbor Harriet Sloane. Honestly, the things I loved most in this book was the friendship between Harriet and Elizabeth.
The flow of the book was mostly even, but after the incident, got very uneven and was a struggle to push through. I was happy when it hit its groove again. I do have to say it didn’t help that we start to get a clown car of characters popping in and I was having trouble tracking some people, but thankfully I was able to.
The ending wrapped up things a little too neatly for me especially since everything beforehand had been so messy when it involved Elizabeth, but I can’t say it wasn’t great that we get happy endings for most of these characters.
