The 87-year-old, who remains Bestway’s chair, had left his native Pakistan seven years earlier for Britain, where he had taken on a variety of jobs including a period spent as a bus conductor in Bradford. Pervez’s convenience store business took off, putting 10 shops in London under his management. But there's also one thing that ratchets up the ridiculous factor: the use of chemistry. God, the use of chemistry. I want to give this to a chemist so they choke to death on their own spit. To be clear, I'm not a pedant, or not too much of one - I don't care if literary fiction for nonspecialists is perfect on every point of chemistry. I care that its idea of a hyperintelligent chemist is one that says 'pass the sodium chloride' instead of 'pass the salt,' or sometimes calls water 'H2O', or calls vinegar 'acetic acid' (which is like calling orange juice 'citric acid', they're not the same thing), or says that they 'almost lost an atom in the isomerization process' while baking (what???). Madeline makes 'mud pies' by drawing 3.1415 in the mud. It's a very teenage nerd kind of approach, with an accompanying shot of the aforementioned edgelord atheism, and an instance of Elizabeth Publicly Owning a vegetarian by saying plants are also alive. In a couple of episodes of the programme, I glimpsed what a good implementation of the chemistry conceit might look like (the one with potato skin and glycoalkaloids was good), but too often it's cringe - particularly the extended metaphor around 'bonds' or the book's steadfast conviction that saying 'we had chemistry' is a deep and powerful statement.

And then there was the preachiness, and the monologues, and the overexplaining. Oh, and it's all tell no show. Also, I got no sense of the time and place. Lessons in Chemistry is such a powerful book without being preachy, and I greatly look forward to reading this one again. I'm a staunch feminist and I agreed and/or recognised most issues, still, I just found this novel annoying, heavy-handed, and way too on the nose. Although Lessons in Chemistry involves extremely important societal issues, the storytelling is phenomenal. The book is absolutely riveting! Set in the 1950s and 1960s, Bonnie Garmus's offbeat comedic historical debut is a joyous and vibrant delight that will wrap its tentacles around your heart with its central protagonist, single mother and research scientist, the smart and beautiful Elizabeth Zott, whose passion for science has her seeing the world and people through the lens of Chemistry. Unfortunately for her, she lives in a time where it is believed that women have no place in science, it's a world where men dominate, control, exploit, patronise and silence women, sexually harrassing, lying, cheating and stealing her research, publishing and passing it off as their own. It doesn't stop there, men feel they can sexually assault a woman, and it will be the woman who pays the price, Elizabeth is forced to leave, unable to complete her PhD, with the police expecting her to 'regret' her behaviour, such are the rage inducing social norms and attitudes of the time.An 'unfortunate event' happened and Elizabeth actions were determined to be the cause. She knows that getting her PhD is no longer possible but she'll never give up her dream. Her only regret is not having more No. 2 pencils to use when the 'unfortunate event' took place! One important idea discussed in this book is the idea of limits, defining what is possible. This is not just fiction.

My enjoyment value was simply ‘so-so’. I didn’t come away with the enthusiasm for this book like many other readers did. For reasons you will discover she begins a very unique cooking show!!!! I love to see her fiery spirit and determination to get what she wants, to dress how she wants. She is determined to raise her child how she wants. All the while she knows that she’s doing things outside of the normal or “average” mother, although Elizabeth would tell you that scientifically there is no “average person”!!!!I had misgivings going into this, because its premise is 'one fierce woman in the 1960s uses her cooking show to teach the housewives of America what they're worth,' and that's a big white feminist fantasy red flag to me. Turns out, I was right, but oh my God I didn't know the half of it. This book is insane in ways that I couldn't even remotely predict from the premise.

Lessons in Chemistry tells the story of a brilliant scientific mind in the 1960s. Only problem is that the mind is in the body of the woman. Not just any woman, but an atypical one who has no interest in marriage or the other traditional trappings of domestic life. Still, one thing leads to another, and she finds herself with a daughter living in the suburbs. Because of the gender roles of that era, her passions and talents for chemistry are going to waste until she ends up with a nightly television show teaching other women how to cook. “Suppers at Six” finally gives home-bound, invisible moms a platform to ask questions, dream big, and prioritize themselves. It also puts items like “acetic acid” on their shopping lists. (That’s vinegar for all you non-sciency types like me.) An insightful, part tear-jerker, truly hilarious at times work with more than enough charisma to make you want to be the best version of yourself? That is Bonnie Garmus’s masterpiece: Lessons In Chemistry. Within 2 years, her show is a staple in every household, with those in the studio audience and at home taking notes -jotting down ingredients, recipes and chemical equations! The way the author pits science and religion against one another is exhausting. As if a person couldn’t possibly have a rational, scientific brain and also believe in something supernatural. 😑 She relies HEAVILY on negative stereotypes of the Catholic Church to prove her point that religion is ignorant, and I’m just tired of this argument. It’s boring, small-minded, and irritating to belittle someone or a group of people you personally disagree with REGARDLESS OF WHAT CAMP YOU’RE IN. Can we be adults and agree to disagree without being petty and taking a shot at someone’s intelligence?I'm not even going to get into the family drama that is technically kind of the core of the book, because it's convoluted and boring and appears to be there solely because there needs to be some resolution that isn't 'and the whole country became feminist. Hooray!'. But essentially, this book is entertaining (sometimes intentionally) but is also completely detached from any actual feminist politic, wilfully ignorant of class and race, hilariously inept vis-a-vis its central conceit, bludgeoningly unsubtle, and has independently rediscovered the fanfiction concept of the 'Mary Sue'. And it includes a dog that understands language and can talk to foetuses. Overall, this is the best book I have read lately! I fell in love with everything about this story and highly, extremely, and absolutely recommend it. I’d heard conflicting opinions and had determined this wasn’t for me. But several friends assured me I’d enjoy it, and it’s currently 53% at 5* and less than 1% at 1* on GR. Elizabeth as a main character just isn't that likeable. I get that she is supposed to be super intelligent and 'quirky' but she doesn't feel like a real person for much of the book, there is nothing to connect to. She also speaks like she is quoting from a textbook about sexism and feminism which does not feel genuine or organic. It felt more like the author was lecturing us. Also don't get me started about her daughter and how intelligent and advanced she was at a ridiculously young age. Of course she had a genius daughter. *eye roll*

Also, we are given information at the end that suggests there was a valid reason Elizabeth wasn’t accepted in the doctoral program, that had nothing to do with her gender or an incident that happened early in the book. This confused me?! What was the message? 🤷🏻‍♀️ These meetings are 15 minutes long and they’re a great opportunity to chat with a tutor before you commit to any tutorials. This gives you and your teen the chance to meet the tutor beforehand and ask any questions you might have to make sure they’re a good fit. There's lots of self-conscious quirk, some of which fits the period more plausibly than others, and much of it is based on stereotypes played for laughs, rather than realism. Like Elizabeth, my 20-something is a scientist at heart, with a passion for cooking. They've extended their skills beyond anything I've taught them by structured research and experimentation around the chemical reactions involved. But even they wouldn't call salt “sodium chloride” (except perhaps as a one-off joke), let alone vinegar by... whatever the chemical name was Elizabeth used on her TV show.Elizabeth Zott has a brilliant mind, so she believes but not a view shared by many men, except Calvin Evans. A man who has created his own rule book and because of his prized work is revered. Yet a man who shares Elizabeth’s passion for chemistry, igniting a romance and a discovery of soul mates that was not destined to last, when Calvin’s life was cut short prematurely. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.