Audiobook Review: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Miranda Raison
Release Date: April 05, 2022
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher’s Description:

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. 

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist working in an all-male lab in the 1960s. She’s highly intelligent and a great researcher but since she’s a woman, she’s overlooked and mistreated. One day, she meets her coworker, the Noble Prize-winning Calvin Evans. He loves her for her brain, not in spite of it. Then a lot of stuff that would be a spoiler happens and she finds herself the host of a cooking show called Supper at Six. Her cooking lessons are infused with chemistry and give bored housewives the mental stimulation they’ve been looking for. She knows that all women have the potential for greatness if given a chance.

I love books with characters who don’t follow social norms and make humorous observations about those who do, without realizing that what they are thinking is funny. Think Don Tillman in The Rosie Project or Bernadette in Where’d You Go, Bernadette – like them, Elizabeth refuses to do things just because that’s the way they have always been done and seems genuinely confused about why other people do them that way.

Lessons in Chemistry had humor for sure but it also had some heavy stuff. The way women were treated in the 1960s is not sugar coated. Some pretty horrible stuff happens to the women in the book. I listened to this book on a long drive and got myself pretty worked up! The narrator was amazing. If you’re able to listen to it, I think it will really add to the experience. She gave each character their own sound and there are a lot of characters. She nailed them all – from gross, blustery men to small children.

Highly recommended.