Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel
Book details
Summary
Description
A delight for readers of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, this blockbuster debut set in 1960s California features the singular voice of Elizabeth Zott, a scientist whose career takes a detour when she becomes the star of a beloved TV cooking show.
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.
But 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.
Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.
Reader reviews
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1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Lots of people will enjoy this book, but if you are an older female who was a bit nerdy and liked science, you will really relate to this story of how things were in science/business 'back in the day.' Thoroughly loved reading this book.
The book portrays a strong woman who writes her own ticket. Elizabeth Zott whose education is terminated after being accosted by a professor moves forward, establishes a relationship with a young, successful chemist. He dies, she is pregnant, keeps daughter and becomes a TV cook. An understory is the difference between the older woman who gives up her child whose life in an orphanage is not great versus the life Elizabeth gives her daughter.
The book is a delight.
In the first pages we follow a mother who conscientiously creates nutritious lunches for her school age daughter who finds the food peculiar and swaps it with her frenemy. The zippy mom has been displaced as a talented chemist, but creates an unusual TV cooking show.
This fast-moving, tightly-constructed, comic novel offers romance, early feminism, and a thinking dog.
So far, over a half-dozen people I know have read the book, and all loved it.
