Lessons in Chemistry

Author: Bonnie Garmus

Rating: 5/5

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist-turned-reluctant-star of the cooking show Supper at Six. Through the cooking show, she hopes to challenge the assumptions society holds about women and what they are capable of.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

In November 1961, Elizabeth Zott packs lunch for Madeline “Mad” Zott (her daughter). She’s the star of Supper at Six which is a cooking show but more a chemistry show. She was cast after she realised Amanda, one of Mad’s classmates, was eating her food. She stormed into Walter Pine’s office who was stunned by her and wanted to work with her. A decade before, in January 1952, Elizabeth worked at Hastings Research Institute as a chemist. She had been a PhD candidate at UCLA but was sexually assaulted by her advisor so she stabbed him with a pencil. At Hastings, she meets Calvin Evans when she takes his beakers for her experiments. Calvin thinks she’s a secretary but apologises later and asks her out. She declines. They run into each other outside a movie theatre when Calvin is on another date and throws up on Elizabeth. The two strike up a friendship and fall in love. Donatti, the head of chemistry at Hastings, doesn’t want Elizabeth to continue her research on abiogenesis but Calvin intervenes. Plus there’s a huge sponsor who wants to fund her research (though Donatti makes the sponsors think that Elizabeth is a man). Elizabeth and Calvin reveal their pasts to each other slowly. Elizabeth’s father was a religious conman who was jailed. Her mother divorced her father and moved to Brazil for tax evasion. Elizabeth’s brother committed suicide because his parents made life a living hell when he revealed his homosexuality. Calvin’s parents had died, his mother during childbirth, his father by a train crash. He was moved to a boys’ home and Calvin learns he was adopted though he doesn’t tell Elizabeth. He believes his biological father to be alive as the home got huge donations. Calvin only confesses this to a penpal named Wakely who’s studying Divinity at Harvard. Calvin went to Cambridge on a rowing scholarship and, over time, received numerous letters from family members.

Elizabeth and Calvin move in together. She rejects his marriage proposal but they adopt a dog named Six-Thirty who follows Elizabeth home. Calvin teaches Elizabeth how to row and introduces her to Dr. Mason, captain of the men’s rowing team at the boathouse and an obstetrician. On morning, while on a run with Six-Thirty, Calvin slips and hits his head and is run over by a police car(?), dying instantly. Donatti reappropriates the funds meant for Elizabeth’s work. Miss Frask, the secretary, tells Elizabeth she’s pregnant and spreads the news about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Donatti fires her. Elizabeth spends all her time rowing or working. Her ex-colleagues come to her for help so she starts charging them. She breaks down her kitchen and makes a lab instead. She sees Dr. Mason in her third trimester and he tells her to keep rowing. Mad is born two weeks before she’s due. Elizabeth’s neighbour Harriet Sloane checks in on her and helps her deal with the newborn. Mad is enrolled in kindergarten at age 4. She’s precocious for her age. Donatti hires Elizabeth as a lab technician. She runs into Frask and the two realise both were assaulted by their advisors and kicked out of their PhD programs. Donatti gets Dr. Boreywitz to steal all of Elizabeth’s work and publishes it under his name. Elizabeth quits. Frask shows Elizabeth all of Calvin’s stuff and they smuggle it away. Elizabeth reads Calvin’s correspondences including the ones with Wakely. Elizabeth, jobless, accepts Walter’s offer.

Phil Lebensmal, Walter’s boss, wants Elizabeth to look “sexy” but she rejects everything and doesn’t read the cue cards. Instead, she teaches chemistry through cooking and is very popular amongst housewives who feel respected. Mad’s homework assignment is to make a family tree. Harriet tells her how Calvin had a “fairy godmother” who funded him (she snooped through his stuff). Madeline goes to the library and meets Reverend Wakely who helps her track down the right home when he realises she is Calvin Evans’ daughter. The bishop avoids Wakely’s calls because Calvin caused him a lot of trouble; the bishop had lied about Calvin being dead because he wanted to secure funding from the Parker Foundation. The Foundation realised the bishop was lying when Calvin won prizes and appeared on magazine covers. Wakely passes the Foundation’s information to Madeline. Elizabeth insults a soup sponsor on air. Lebensmal meets her alone and tries to sexually assault her but Elizabeth pulls out her chef’s knife and he has a heart attack. She calls an ambulance. She also discovers lots of sponsorship and syndication offers. Walter becomes executive producer and gets sponsors. Life magazine wants to interview her. She reluctantly agrees after Walter and Harriet persuade her. She tells Franklin Roth everything but the editor publishes a different article which diminishes all her nuances and scientific work. Roth quits and is rejected from other news outlets. He sends Elizabeth the article he had written. Mad finds it and takes it to Wakely. She meets Frask who is Wakely’s typist and Frask sends a letter to Life admonishing their article. Harriet tries to get the good article published somewhere.

After talking to Wakely, Elizabeth realises she wants to quit the show. She gets no job offers but Frask calls her and tells her to return to Hastings. The Parker Foundation realised that Donatti had lied to them and fired Donatti. Elizabeth is given the head of chemistry position. Avery Parker, the woman who runs the Foundation, reveals she is Calvin’s biological mother (she was pregnant out of wedlock) and was forced to give Calvin up for adoption. She tried writing to her son and she wanted to meet him but then he died. Avery wants to meet Madeline. Elizabeth invites her home for dinner and she continues her abiogenesis research at Hastings.

Review

I was sure this book was overhyped and avoided reading it for ages. To my pleasant surprise, Lessons in Chemistry made me feel proud to be a woman. After finishing this book, I felt consumed by a fire to do something, anything. My only complaint is that this book wasn’t longer. I could have easily read another five hundred pages about Elizabeth Zott. Lessons in Chemistry examines the challenges women face in a patriarchal society. It highlights the unfairness and lack of respect women dealt with, and the endless illogical arguments made to diminish and degrade women.

To say I lapped it up like chocolate is an understatement. I was enamoured with Elizabeth’s grit and tenacity. I admired how she stood by her values and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. I loved her passion for chemistry and how she wholeheartedly believed in herself and other women.

The romance between Elizabeth and Calvin Evans was one of my favourite storylines. I liked that he respected her and thought of her as an intellectual partner. I also loved how they considered each other soulmates and shared everything. Elizabeth described it best, that their love was chemistry, a collision, the kind of bond that is so rare to find but so special. And then there were all the colleagues who looked down on their relationship, burning with envy from the inside out and rooting for them to break up. To them, it was unfair that two seemingly attractive and bold innovators in chemistry could have such a perfect relationship together. I’m worried that I would be one of these spectators. I do tend towards jealousy though I think I have become better about feeling happy for happy couples than envious of them.

Elizabeth’s philosophy behind teaching was one I wished more educational institutes would implement. I loved how she had complete faith in both Mad and Six-Thirty to learn vocabulary despite them being a 4-year-old child and a dog respectively. I also agreed with her that the way learning is done now is very monotonous and repetitive with no room for fun, exploration and curiosity. That is, after all, the way prodigies are formed. (Also, I was SO relieved when Six-Thirty didn’t die at the end of the book!)

I enjoyed reading about the friendship between Harriet and Elizabeth. It was a little less fun that Harriet was being assaulted and cheated on by her husband though. Anyway, it was really wholesome to see their family grow. I was also glad that Walter fell for Harriet and not Elizabeth.

There were so many heartwrenching moments in this book. Calvin’s death definitely got me but I suppose I had anticipated that one. I felt a rush of emotion when Elizabeth had the viewer come up and tell everyone about her aspiration to become a heart surgeon. I felt massive respect for all the housewives who were–and still are–taken advantage of and disrespected.

Also, I loved the nod to rowing. Dr. Mason was hilarious and I liked that he didn’t blink twice when Elizabeth turned out to be a good rower.