Lessons in Chemistry

I flew through this book and enjoyed it a lot. I liked Elizabeth as a character, loved the interplay of Elizabeth and Miss Frask especially as the book went on. Loved Harriet and the few friends that Elizabeth/Mad managed to cobble together especially as the book went on. Loved how Elizabeth treated the cooking show, as an extension of chemistry even though she wasn't able to work in a lab, and how that resonated with her audience of women wanting to be taken seriously.

Got irritated because I couldn't figure out how old Mad was supposed to be. I get that she's supposed to be brilliant, but if she is truly supposed to be four, there is no way she's understanding The Sound and the Fury. One of my favorite childhood movies was Matilda, but even that seemed more realistic, as a very serious six-and-a-half year old who loves to read. Now I have a couple of six-year-old niblings, so maybe Matilda wasn't exactly a realistic portrayal either, but it made more sense to me than this. And I didn't dislike Mad at all! I just wanted ... some element of her character that didn't read like a pretentious 32-year-old. And that ended up extending to Six-Thirty as well. Dogs are smart yes, but you can't know how many words your dog knows and understands. He's allowed to just have an internal dialogue without having a measuring stick to prove he's smart.

I found the ending a little bit confusing, it all felt kind of rushed with Elizabeth meeting the Parker Foundation people and Calvin's relatives and all that ... I didn't need it to wrap up so neatly, especially since so little of Elizabeth's life had been easy or neat.

So, I liked it, didn't love it.

TW: sexism, rape, adoption, trauma by religious institutions (specifically thinking about the women's home lying to Calvin's mother about her son being stillborn, and when she found out it was a lie, lying to her that her son was dead again; similarly, lying to Calvin that his mother had died in childbirth)