Chemistry Lessons
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.
“And then they looked at one another as if to confirm what they had already long suspected: Americans were idiots.” Page 18.
Not like it is a new idea.
I do appreciate—really like—strident feminist positions.
There’s a weird echo, I kept thinking about another literary character who rows, by the equally mesmerizing Laura Lippman.
Wry observations.
”And, unlike other species, which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice.” Page 179.
Just fun, with a decided edge to it.
“In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural.” Page 214.
And stupid, if you ask me, but not many do.
At least one blurb included a level of sodden sentimentality that worried me, and an unexamined look at frank sexism in our recent past? I’m not all on board with that. Sounded a little too cute.
The copy I read was 350 pages, but I use a library e-reader with slightly larger typeface. That copy just brought me right along, nodding in agreement with the feminist material, which really should be humanist, not feminist, and then, for the last few pages? The denouement was schmaltzy — almost cloyingly so, to my tastes, but I was so invested in the story itself, I couldn’t put the book down.
Despite the overwhelming concluding sentimentality of the story itself? The book was outrageously good — and fun. The depth and breadth of the science itself was wonderful. There was a little rewriting history, but we all do that, don’t we?
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.
Chemistry Lessons
