Lessons in Chemistry is more about challenging the status quo than it is about how to combine chemicals safely. This NYT Book of the Year by Bonnie Garmus is about stupid white men trying to control an intelligent woman, Elizabeth Zott, who refuses to accept the 1960s convention. The book was adapted into an Apple TV+ series, which I watched before reading. Subsequently, it became a Book Club selection, and I worried that it might not live up to the quality of the television series.
It was worse than I could have imagined. Men are retarded brutes who live on prejudices and lower base instincts, and women are primarily virtuous and put up with men to save the family. There is the lying bishop at the boy’s home who thinks only of money, the pastor who does not believe in God, the TV station manager who has to be the worst boss ever created in literature and would make Archie Bunker blush, the UCLA dean who raped Elizabeth and got her expelled from school, and her father who is in prison for being an evangelical fraud and murderer and drove his son to suicide. Don’t forget the executive at the lab who is clueless and plagiarizes Elizabeth’s work. The author exploits stereotypes and prejudices. Still, it was entertaining. If you saw the TV series, save your money and don’t buy the book.