A smart, funny, big-hearted debut combining chemical elements into what seems a winning formula—one whose breakneck pace and gently ironic tone should appeal to readers of literary-commercial hits by American authors such as Katherine Heiny, Emma Straub and Curtis Sittenfeld. Fizzing with feminist humour and romance, this radiant, life-affirming novel sees a brilliant chemist and single mother switch to presenting a hit TV cooking show that challenges 1960s social norms. A fun, feminist charmer, Bonnie Garmus’s novel Lessons in Chemistry follows singular single mother Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist in a man’s world—1960s America—as she becomes an unlikely cooking-show host and the role model her daughter deserves. Michael Byers from Cascadia Daily News wrote that the "heroine is brave, original and completely unafraid" and that the reasons for the book's success are clear. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobelprize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love withof all thingsher mind.

Garmus’s novel focuses on a female scientist whose ambitions are impeded—and then rerouted—by a world not yet ready for her. So rooted in the 60s and so relatable in the 20s, at least by women still pushing against the boundaries of sex discrimination and disappointment.

I fell in love with the main character immediately - a woman who has the audacity to want to earn a PhD in science - in the 1960's - what on earth was she thinking? Her encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture extends across film, TV shows, literature and even video games.

The new job serves as the perfect platform for her to educate her audience on chemistry and women's true worth under the guise of traditional cooking. In a place she had determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her, and us, that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps it’s nothing more than a little luck. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Darkly funny and poignant, Lessons in Chemistry paints an extraordinary portrait of an unusual life in 1960s California…Irresistible, a gorgeous tribute to resilience and the many types of love that sustain us. The United States edition, with its bubble gum pink cover bearing a stylized woman’s face peering over a pair of cat-eye sunglasses, reads as overtly feminine, a light beach read for a day off. Elizabeth is a feminist and modern thinker […] in a world nowhere ready for her mind, character or ambition. It was voted Hay Festival Book of the Year by readers, won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Debut and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. Between the outrageous sexism and the bitter misfortune that thwart our heroine at every turn, this may not sound like a comic novel, but it is.