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Lessons in Chemistry

The modern classic multi-million-copy bestseller

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Lessons in Chemistry

By: Bonnie Garmus
Narrated by: Miranda Raison
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INCLUDES AN EXCLUSIVE AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH PANDORA SYKES
Meet Elizabeth Zott. Scientist. Trailblazer. Rule-breaker.
The multi-award-winning international bestseller, now a major Apple TV+ series starring Brie Larson.
There is no such thing as an average woman. Especially not Elizabeth Zott.
It's the early 1960s, and Elizabeth is a brilliant chemist working in a world that believes science is a man's job.
At Hastings Research Institute, the only colleague who truly recognises her extraordinary mind is Calvin Evans, a brilliant, Nobel Prize-nominated chemist. But life has other plans.
When Elizabeth becomes the reluctant star of America's most popular cooking show, Supper at Six, she refuses to tell women simply how to cook. Instead, she teaches them to question the rules, trust themselves and change their lives.
As millions tune in, Elizabeth is no longer demonstrating recipes. She is challenging the status quo, one molecule at a time.

Readers love Lessons in Chemistry:
'Everyone needs to read this.'
'The best book I have read this year. Funny, warm and utterly unique.'
'Funny, honest and heart-wrenching. I was hooked until the very end.'

© Bonnie Garmus 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

 Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Romance Women's Fiction Biography Comedy Funny Inspiring Heartfelt Witty Feel-Good
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Critic reviews

The most charming, life-enhancing novel I've read in ages. A perfect delight. It's about Elizabeth Zott, a scientist who accidentally becomes a TV cook in the early 1960s. Very strongly recommend
This triumphant feminist fable, wittily observed, is teeming with vivid comic set-pieces
Polished, funny, thought-provoking. Wearing its research lightly but confidently with sentences so stylishly turned it's hard to believe it's a debut ... The real pleasure is in the dry wit of Garmus's writing
Not only is Elizabeth an unforgettable character, so too are her adorable dog Six Thirty and daughter, Mad. This is a truly unique book with some great life lessons
A book that sparks joy with every page. LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY is both funny and rousing: it had me laughing one minute and air-punching the next. Bonnie Garmus has created an unforgettable heroine
It's the world versus Elizabeth Zott, an extraordinary woman determined to live on her own terms, and I had no trouble choosing a side. Lessons in Chemistry is a page-turning and highly satisfying tale: zippy, zesty, and Zotty
Full of humour, heartbreak and characters who feel like real people. This is a book that everyone will be talking about
I haven't loved a character as much as the hero of this joyful, warm debut in a very long time
Absolutely unputdownable. I completely loved it
A transporting read, recommended for fans of Where'd You Go, Bernadette and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel
All stars
Most relevant
An excellent book, that I just couldn’t stop listening to! Sad, funny, and tragic, you can’t help but love Elizabeth Zot, Mad, Harriet, Wakely, Dr Mason, Mr Pine and even Miss Frask, but Six-Thirty steals the book!
I defy you not to enjoy this wonderful story.

So well read by Miranda Raison, I need to find other books read by her!

Had me at the first page.

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I didn’t want this book to end. Wonderfully crafted characters and a gripping story with plenty of humour. Absolutely love 6.30. Totally worthy of the hype. And a fantastic narrator too. I will definitely listen again.

Fantastic

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Listened to this after hearing a review on the radio. It was wonderful. I loved it 😊

Fantastic book.

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This first novel has taken off - translations across the world and the promise of a film - and it deserves it! Set in the 1950s and 60s it’s the story of uncompromising, determined, dynamic, highly intelligent Elizabeth Zott who above everything else – lover, mother, rower – is, as she constantly reiterates, a SCIENTIST. Thwarted by the sexual and social mores of those decades (sexually assaulted and then fired by her boss; her work appropriated by a male colleague…) Elizabeth becomes a presenter of Supper at Six, a cooking programme filled with her own unique brand of uplifting gastronomic chemistry, filling her avid women viewers with the power and vitality to change their lives beyond producing supper at six o’clock for their husbands and children.

Elizabeth herself is too serious to do humour, but the book is full of laugh aloud quirkiness: the hard-hitting questioning of Elizabeth’s all-seeing precocious daughter Mad, the dog Six-Thirty full of more insight and intelligence than most humans, to the sharp witty similes. There’s also poignancy as in the loving partnership between Elizabeth and Calvin, her lost star-studded chemist partner, and the development between Elizabeth and Mad; and there is the grievous pain of bereavement and loss. The serious core concerning inequality permeates the whole story – not a new theme, but presented through this sparklingly original framework of lessons in Chemistry and the binding sport of rowing. You can forgive the occasional lapses (too much coincidence; an over-abundance of characters...) - the whole just throbs with life, positivity and dynamism (well captured by the narration) - and I loved it!

The download has a bonus: an interview with the author Bonnie Garmus. This may be her first novel , but she has over two decades of copywriting behind her which shows . She’s not a chemist as you would think, but learned all the chemistry from text books, she’s a keen rower and has a super-intelligent dog like Six Thirty who allows her children’s hamster to sit on his head! Another novel will definitely follow and I expect her passionate rooting for equality will be as attractively presented as in this one.




"Chemistry is Change!"

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What a wonderful book, I feel inspired and moved, well done Bonnie!! Good luck with the tv adaptation I can almost see it in my minds eye

Best book I’ve listened too

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