HT reviewer Teja Lele picks her favourite read of 2023

I picked up Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry amid a particularly long reading slump earlier this year. I didn’t expect much of a reaction, pun intended, but the copywriter’s debut novel blew me away. And just like that, I was back in my reading “element”!

Published by Doubleday in April 2022, Lessons in Chemistry is set in the 1950s and 1960s, and tells the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist forced out of her hard-won job at a research lab. Challenging societal norms and fighting for equality, she goes from falling in love with a man who admires her mind to becoming a single mother hosting her own iconic cooking show. By her side are her brainy daughter and an extremely intelligent dog named Six-thirty (for the time when Elizabeth found him on the street).

Lessons in Chemistry has a molecular approach to humour. Amid the many laugh-out-loud moments and shrewd observations, the revenge comedy offered numerous life lessons and thoughts to ponder on – all scientifically backed.

“Chemistry is change and change is the core of your belief system. Which is good because that’s what we need more of – people who refuse to accept the status quo, who aren’t afraid to take on the unacceptable,” Elizabeth says.

The protagonist knows that she lives in “a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less,” but refuses to toe the line. The fact that she spews her favourite word, “no”, all the time is endearing.

Garmus wrote Zott be a “role model”, a rational woman who “wasn’t going to apologise every time she wanted to say something, but who also based everything she said on evidence and absolutely refused to give in to the illogic that guides the workplace, our world, our governments”.

The California-born Seattle native, who now lives in London, started working on the novel after a particularly rough day at work, a day when she was the only woman in a boardroom and presented her pitch only to have a senior male colleague claim her work.

She set Lessons in Chemistry in world of science “because science knows better – science knows that this kind of discrimination [in her character’s case, based on gender] has no biological basis. So for it to happen in science, it’s kind of ironic”.

An irate Elizabeth just can’t fall in line with a male colleague who proposes that she should learn to “outsmart” the system, because why can’t systems just be “smart in the first place”?

The infectiously bold protagonist speaks for us all: “Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change – and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”

Interestingly, the novel also offers another lesson: rejection is just another step on your path to success. Garmus’ first novel, which predated Lessons in Chemistry, was rejected a whopping “98 times” for being “too long”, at 700 pages.

But she took Elizabeth’s words to heart: “No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve.”

At a time when women are angrier than ever before, about everything from police brutality and sexual violence to archaic systems and domestic inequality, this book strikes the right chord.

Juxtaposing sparkling wit with righteous anger, Elizabeth fumes, “Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionise. Marriage counsellors would go out of business. Do you see my point?”

Yes, I do.

READ MORE: HT reviewers pick their best reads of 2023

Teja Lele is an independent editor and writes on books, travel and lifestyle