Dave's Book Blog: "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

Friday 28 October 2022

"Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

I was underwhelmed. Yes, it is a fast-paced, often witty, crisply-written book. Yes, it is perfectly in tune with these PC times, being an expose of some of the dreadful customs practised by the patriarchy in the US (and probably elsewhere) in the 1960s (and other times): this is feminist history writ large. But in terms of characters, this is as simplistic as it gets. Of the women, there is one character who starts off bad but ends up good; all of the others are good and the lead woman, Elizabeth and her daughter Mad, are hugely talented to the point of genius (as is their male dog). There are some good men (though they are usually inadequate) but there are many who are wicked. There is only one character - already mentioned - who actually has a character arc. Not a single character has any mix of good or bad in them. And this, for me, made it a shallow read. I was unable to suspend my disbelief. It was superficial.

It was an easy read and I read it quickly, but mostly because I was desperate to finish so that I could read something else that might have a little more challenge to it.

Looking through some of the other reviews on goodreads, I notice that a number of people don't like the main character because she makes the other female characters look so weak. There are also those who hate her militant atheism (the Roman Catholic church in particular comes off badly). One review suggested that the attitudes displayed were all cliched. I don't think that it is fair to critique a book because you don't like the main character, or the attitudes espoused (good fiction should challenge one's beliefs) but I did agree with the criticism that the main character was so amazingly clever and so stunningly attractive and so morally strong that she was unbelievable and as for the four year old who read books most of us read in out late teens or later and carried on utterly adult conversations with a priest; she was so ridiculously unbelievable that the book only be satire.

I have discovered that such a character is called a 'Mary Sue'. To quote wikipedia, a Mary Sue is "a character archetype in fiction, usually a young woman, who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, gifted with unique talents or powers, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and/or generally lacking meaningful character flaws. Usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors. ... As a literary trope, the Mary Sue archetype is broadly associated with poor quality writing."

That seems to fit.

There is an AppleTV+ series based on the book. This is reviewed in New Scientist #3462. Unfortunately the reviewer bases her judgement on whether the show delivers the message that she wants to hear "Thankfully ... the version of Lessons in Chemistry I craved did eventually materialise." It seems to me that the book's popularity has been based on it providing a message which women want to be told, rather than any artistic merit. This seems to be increasingly common with reviews. Even the 2021 Nobel Prize was awarded to Abdulrazak Gurnah for “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents” rather than for his ability to write. This makes me sad.

Selected quotes:

"He was like a dog who, after years of trying, catches a squirrel and then has absolutely no idea what to do with it." (Ch 3)
"Six-Thirty was badly in need of a bath. Tall, gray, thin, and covered with barbed-wire-like fur that made him look as if he'd barely survived electrocution, he stood very still as they shampooed him." (Ch 7)
"Because while stupid people may not know they're stupid because they're stupid, surely unattractive people must know they're unattractive because of mirrors." (Ch 18)
"Harriet thought it was wrong not to believe in God. It lacked humility." (Ch 27)
"Harriet believes if you blow on dice, you'll get better numbers at Yahtzee." (Ch 33) So did my granny!
"Religion ... let's us off the hook ,,, it teaches us ... that ultimately, we're not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray." (Ch 37)