Book Review

 Lessons In Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

It is so disheartening, as a writer, to feel that, with each year that passes, you grow older while every new novelist, poet or playwright you hear about seems to be in their twenties. I remember feeling very depressed when, in 1992, Donna Tartt's debut novel The Secret History was published when she was just twenty-eight - and, worse still, it was deservedly lauded! At the time, I too was aged 28, and all I'd had published were a few poems. I couldn't even moan that my novel had been rejected by publishers because I hadn't got round to writing one yet. It felt as if time and opportunity were passing me by.  

How much worse, then, to reach my sixtieth year and realise I still hadn't published a novel. I've had well over a hundred poems and short stories published, but completing that novel seems to be a vanishing dream. Getting such a novel accepted by a publisher at my age, in a world that appears to revere youth and beauty beyond everything, feels like an impossibility.

Then I came across Bonnie Garmus's novel Lessons In Chemistry. Garmus was born in 1957, in Seattle. She has a degree in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz, and has worked as a copywriter, but her debut novel wasn't published until 2022 when she was over sixty. This is why I mention her year of birth as it is so rare to read a first novel by someone of Garmus's age, especially one which has been a best-seller and has been adapted for TV by Apple TV+.

It isn't simply her success as a writer that makes me want to review her novel - it's been reviewed by many others, and no one needs to read my comments. But the fact is that I think it is brilliant. It has the wit and lightness of touch of someone who has experienced life, but also that same person's understanding of the darkness that gives power to that with and lightness of touch. It is lively, outrageous in places, complicated, very funny but also deals with serious themes. 

Its main character, Elizabeth Zott, is a protagonist to be treasured. I found myself entirely on her side, sharing her thoughts and emotional responses, and though the plot is at times a little far-fetched it always felt plausible and realistic to me. 

Garmus is writing about a woman who is only slightly older than herself, a woman of her own mother's generation; her story begins in the early 1950s when Elizabeth is a young chemistry graduate working at a slightly second-rate research facility where she is the only female scientist. She experiences misogynistic abuse in a world that feels quite alien to my own experience, despite everything the #Me Too Movement has told us about some male attitudes to women, but at the same time it has the distinct ring of authenticity about it. Elizabeth meets Calvin Evans, an established and respected scientist, with whom she falls in love. 

I loved the pace of this novel. It jogs along in a lively way, moving backwards and forwards through time but in a way that doesn't confuse the reader. The characters are superb - I found Calvin laugh-out-loud funny at times. There is a dry humour here, with lively dialogue, and the professional competition and jealousies within the scientific world are presented with aching accuracy. The relationship between Calvin and Elizabeth struck me as searingly true-to-life despite its comedic elements. This is not a romcom, however. It tackles important, serious issues. Bad things happen. There are lots of nasty people, particularly but not exclusively male. But the plot bounces along, witty and well-informed, and I found it unputdownable.

***** You must read it