“Know what you need to do, dig in really hard, and do not expect it to be easy.”

As I checked out this book, the librarian said, “Did you wait a long time? People are waiting a long time for ‘Lessons in Chemistry’” so I read it promptly. It took only three days to go the 385 page distance because the book was so thrilling and satisfying. I have reconsidered my recent vow to avoid novels: this one was a delight. For months I have been chewing on Terry Real’s observation: we live in a society that is patriarchal, narcissistic and addicted. Elizabeth, the chemist, is working in the early 1960s, back when I was making plans to become a biologist. The author, Bonnie Garmus, draws a clear picture of the efforts made by men in academia and the in business of science to oppress, repress and dismiss women. Talented women. Hard-working women.

Garmus said, “the book isn’t anti-men, it’s anti-sexism.”

I love how the book came into being. According to Sadie Stein in her New York Times interview of author Bonnie Garmus, a career copywriter who experiences some “garden variety misogyny” one day at work and takes her anger out on the page.

“I felt like I was writing my own role model, and so she came easily… [the chemist understood that] You can really do what you need to do. You just have to dig in really hard and not expect it to be very easy.”

I learned a lot about rowing, and both the author and the chemist relieve stress by working out on an “erg” a rowing machine. Bonnie Garmus had endured nearly 100 rejections of prior projects during her career as a copywriter, so if you just considered “Lessons in Chemistry,” it might look like an overnight success story: she took her anger out on the page, caught the eye of an agent who offered representation on the strength of three chapters. The book goes to auction; bidding wars ensue; the novel comes out and surpasses expectations.

I am glad that this book is striking a nerve with readers because it shines a light on 1960s behaviors that were so corrosive. By placing the novel in the recent past, it tells the truth about the oppression, mocking and belittling in the hard sciences that continues today in technology companies but is more skillfully denied (gaslighted). At the same time, the book was hilarious and I laughed out loud a lot. Reading this book was like putting healing ointment on a skinned knee.

I have been thinking a lot about the “American Dream” and its abhorrence of failure. Bonnie Garmus makes it very clear that in science, as in life, failure is an important part of the growth process and is to be grasped ferociously and wrestled to the ground. I was gratified to learn:

One high-school teacher, says Garmus, is making her students read “Lessons in Chemistry” for a class on the American dream.