certainly women have been, and are, discriminated against. I’m not denying that bias occurs but the exaggeration and preposterous events in the story hinders the message. I have a science degree. I took many college courses in STEM. I worked in a male dominated work culture. In this book every single man in a power position was a misogynist. Not realistic. Please stop it.. I have a lot of thoughts. For the sake of my own energy and sanity, I’m just going to bullet point the things I want to say: But there's also one thing that ratchets up the ridiculous factor: the use of chemistry. God, the use of chemistry. I want to give this to a chemist so they choke to death on their own spit. To be clear, I'm not a pedant, or not too much of one - I don't care if literary fiction for nonspecialists is perfect on every point of chemistry. I care that its idea of a hyperintelligent chemist is one that says 'pass the sodium chloride' instead of 'pass the salt,' or sometimes calls water 'H2O', or calls vinegar 'acetic acid' (which is like calling orange juice 'citric acid', they're not the same thing), or says that they 'almost lost an atom in the isomerization process' while baking (what???). Madeline makes 'mud pies' by drawing 3.1415 in the mud. It's a very teenage nerd kind of approach, with an accompanying shot of the aforementioned edgelord atheism, and an instance of Elizabeth Publicly Owning a vegetarian by saying plants are also alive. In a couple of episodes of the programme, I glimpsed what a good implementation of the chemistry conceit might look like (the one with potato skin and glycoalkaloids was good), but too often it's cringe - particularly the extended metaphor around 'bonds' or the book's steadfast conviction that saying 'we had chemistry' is a deep and powerful statement. Okay, folks, I just finished the best book of 2022! Now I can relax knowing that I don't need to search for something better. No, wait, I lied. Not about finding the best book - this one is freaking amazing - but I will continue to search for exemplary fictions like this that can speak to my heart and soul at the same time! I give it five gazillion stars!

The plot had promise, too. Elizabeth Zott is a chemist in academia, but is forced out before her doctorate because of the misogyny of the times. When she finds success as a reluctant star of daytime TV, she subverts the genre by making her cooking show about chemistry, not domesticity.I found this mostly boring, to be honest. The book zips from really dark subjects like rape and abuse to light somewhat farcical subjects like teaching a dog English or Elizabeth becoming an amazing rower by studying physics (women can smart their way into being better than six foot athletic men at everything because saying they can't is sexist, yo)... and I struggled to find any of it compelling.

Elizabeth views herself as a scientist but knows, by experience, female scientists are virtually non-existent. Ten days before graduating with her master's degree from UCLA, the admissions committee rescinded her application to the doctoral program. I loved the author's extra-intelligent, dark, original sense of humor, and I fell in love with her characters. The story of Elizabeth brought out so many complex feelings: I laughed, I got angry, I cried, I sighed, I laughed again, and as soon as I finished the last chapter, I gave my ovation! This is an underrated secret gem! Don't you dare skip this book or let it sit in your TBR pile. Just read it! stars rounded up to 5. Book club recommended. Thanks to #NetGalley and Doubleday Books for my advanced reader copy. The expected publication date is April 5, 2022. Her daughter, Madeline, was so over the top it was ridiculous. She “befriended” a priest and investigated her father’s family tree? At age 4? It’s weird. The writing is really fast paced, nothing is really to difficult to grasp and there's the reading is very light. I found the faster I read it the more I liked it!Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results. So this book centres on Elizabeth Zott, an impossibly intelligent woman with perfect 21st-century politics (also she's beautiful but she doesn't, like, care about that) who's been inexplicably plopped into a 1950s setting. She's a self-taught chemist, working on abiogenesis, which the book appears to think can low-key disprove religion (this book has a very weird relationship to religion - edgelord atheist vibes), but because it's the 1950s, she's forced out of her doctoral programme and undervalued at work. She strikes up a relationship with a powerful chemist who adores her, but he dies in an accident, leaving her unwed, pregnant and fired, doing consultation work so the men at her old lab can actually understand their results. Undeterred, she builds a lab at home, and ends up getting hired to a local cooking programme, which she converts into a serious scientific cooking programme that the housewives of America love because She Treats Them Like Adults. this book should be shelved in the fantasy section. Seriously. It’s fantasy. Which is fine, but if I had known I would have skipped it. The switch between fantastical elements and serious ones gave me whiplash. Atheism vs Faith. The author mentions multiple times that this is a free country and we have a right to our beliefs. I 100% agree. But she apparently believes only atheists have a right to their beliefs. I’m no bible thumping extremist, but it’s offensive when religion and people of faith are portrayed only in derogatory terms, such as faith is “a simpleton’s recipe for prayers and beads” and a funeral service was “boring verse and preposterous prayers”. A minister muses that the problem with his job “was how many times he had to lie”. The ministers and priests were all child abusers, liars, and greedy crooks. Lay people of faith were all violent protestors and/or morons. The message repeatedly driven home throughout the book, ad nauseam? Atheism = good People of faith = bad.

In 1960, after her traumatic experience at UCLA, she starts working at the Hastings Research Institute, which is administered with a male workforce that ignores her enthusiasm and hard work. Only one person sees her and shows respect for her accomplishments: an aspiring, Nobel Prize-nominated, grudge-holder named Calvin Evans. Although I was overall underwhelmed, I did enjoy the authors notes - (my absolute favorite part) - she almost sold me on how groundbreaking her book was. Lessons in Chemistry is a breath of fresh air - a witty, propulsive, and refreshingly hopeful novel populated with singular characters. This book is an utter delight - wry, warm and compulsively readable." - Claire Lombardo On par with Beth Harmon of The Queen's Gambit, Elizabeth Zott swept me away with her intellect, honesty, and unapologetic selfhood. Lessons in Chemistry is a story for all the smart girls who refuse to dumb themselves down despite a culture that demands otherwise. Though a creation of the 50s & 60s, Zott is a feminist icon for our time." - Rachel YoderBut like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo. Elizabeth Zott is not your average person. She’s a brilliant, highly trained scientist who hasn’t gotten farther along in the world of chemistry simply because she’s a woman. She is working at the Hastings Institute performing a job that she is completely over qualified for! In my experience— I never had a problem. I wasn’t sexually harassed — nobody put their hand up my skirt unless I wanted them to . I was never patted on the head or belittle for being less than. I kind of liked the main character, a very idyllic modern female protagonist who's passion in chemistry and on TV inspires people because of how she visibly subverts expectations by what a woman in 1950s society should be like inspiring women like Marjorie to pursue their dreams and avoid allowing society and fear to dictate their world. If you've watched the French film Amelie, you will get a sense of similarity with it in the initial chapters - which I enjoyed coz I loved Amelie.

An 'unfortunate event' happened and Elizabeth actions were determined to be the cause. She knows that getting her PhD is no longer possible but she'll never give up her dream. Her only regret is not having more No. 2 pencils to use when the 'unfortunate event' took place!

Before anyone knew there’d even be a sixties movement… when the big wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people were starting to think fresh and believe everything was possible.” Patriarchy, pencils in the hair (see cover art of some editions), sexual assault, rowing (boats, not arguments), a kindergarten family-tree project, and the corrupting power of money all feature prominently. Elizabeth was difficult to warm to --not because of her abrasive personality-- because she felt like a mouthpiece for 21st Century feminist monologues. This is supposed to be the 1950s? I just didn't buy it. All her rants are straight out of a modern day Smash the Patriarchy podcast. And it deserves a further eye roll for the fact that because she is all into science and logic and whatever, this means Elizabeth is also cold, robotic and devoid of emotion. Cos we all know you can't be a scientist AND have feelings. Maybe the author worried if she showed emotion we'd find her too womanly. This book enraged me, frustrated me, made me laugh out loud in many places, especially when Harriet first enters the story, and it made me tear up in painful sorrow, in sympathy, and finally in happiness. And it accomplished all this without angst.