Sameer Gudhate Presents the Book Review of Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

There’s something oddly satisfying about watching chaos simmer — in a test tube or a kitchen. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus captures that messy alchemy of life, science, and womanhood with a spark that refuses to be contained. It’s the kind of book that arrives wearing a lab coat but hides a rebellious smile underneath — equal parts thought experiment and emotional explosion.

Bonnie Garmus, a debut author who was in her sixties when this novel made its grand entrance, seems to have distilled her own experiences in male-dominated rooms into the chemistry of fiction. And oh, what a reaction she’s created. Her heroine, Elizabeth Zott, is a chemist in the early 1960s — brilliant, stubborn, devastatingly self-possessed, and allergic to conformity. When life corners her — as it often does women who dare to be extraordinary — she doesn’t shatter; she recalibrates. Fired from her research institute, she becomes the unlikely host of a TV cooking show, Supper at Six, and turns it into a scientific and feminist revolution, one molecule (and one casserole) at a time.

Reading it feels like being handed a beaker that’s about to bubble over. The premise sounds whimsical — a scientist teaching chemistry through cooking — but the themes run deep: sexism, loss, resilience, the absurdities of societal expectations. And Garmus doesn’t let you breathe easily through any of it. Her prose is sharp, witty, and layered with irony — think of it as Mad Men meets The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but with a pipette in hand. The writing balances deadpan humour with heartbreak. One moment you’re laughing at Elizabeth’s sardonic observations; the next, you’re staring at the page, stunned by the brutality of what she endures.

Elizabeth herself isn’t written to be liked — she’s written to be understood. She is unapologetically rational in an irrational world, a woman who uses logic as armor. And yet, it’s her emotional unawareness that makes her oddly tender. Her daughter, Mad, a precocious eight-year-old with more curiosity than the world knows how to handle, mirrors her mother’s brilliance and loneliness. And then there’s Six-Thirty, the dog who understands language and emotions better than most humans — a character who somehow manages to hold the novel’s beating heart.

But here’s where things get delightfully tricky. The book isn’t historical fiction in the traditional sense — it’s more like 21st-century feminism accidentally time-travelled to the 1950s. Some will call that anachronistic; others (like me) might call it defiant. Yes, it’s exaggerated. Yes, at times it reads like fantasy. But perhaps that’s the point — Garmus isn’t reconstructing the past; she’s reimagining what it should have been.

Still, not everything blends perfectly in this chemical reaction. The tone sometimes wobbles between dark trauma and sitcom energy, giving readers a kind of emotional whiplash. Certain moments — a shocking assault, a cartoonish villain, an almost superhuman sense of righteousness — feel like ingredients that didn’t quite dissolve. But even when it’s uneven, the mixture is fascinating to watch.

What lingered with me wasn’t the science or the satire, but the quiet moments when Elizabeth’s defiance turned inward. There’s a scene where she tells her viewers, “Cooking is chemistry. And chemistry is change.” It’s meant to be about food, but it’s really about life — about how transformation always begins at the molecular level, invisible and unstoppable.

Reading Lessons in Chemistry in today’s world — where women still fight to be heard in boardrooms, labs, and even their own homes — feels like holding a mirror that both flatters and mocks us. The story may wear a retro dress, but its pulse beats loudly in the present.

By the time I closed the book, I found myself smiling at how audacious it was — imperfect, yes, but gloriously so. Like an experiment that explodes in colour when everyone expects smoke.

So if you’re looking for a story that makes you laugh, ache, and maybe question your own equations of courage and conformity — pick up Lessons in Chemistry. Stir it well. Let it fizz. And see what reactions it stirs in you.

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