REVIEW: Lessons In Chemistry – Why The Book Is Always Better
Hear me out. This is not pretentiousness. I’m going to prove it using Lessons in Chemistry, the latest big thing on air.
A film is created by a large group of people. Writers, actors, sound people, directors, producers, financiers, studios, theatres, streaming services, platforms and more. A book is also a group creation but centered around an author with the editor weighing in. Even if the publication has disproportionate flex, the story is in the author’s core voice. In most such cases, the authors gain much less than if they aligned with the publisher’s commercial agenda.
On the other hand, a skewed power balance drives cinema. The powers are cis male, white, upper caste or the most powerful social class in their areas. Films are controlled by the profit motive of studios & producers. These people often have a history of exploitation (Hello, Harry Weinstein), nepotism, whitewashing and crime.
Even screenwriters wield very little power over the final product of film that we see; what respect do you suppose the author of the book the film is based on, gets? A film is a product created for maximum profit and minimal cost of production. I know it will always pick the easy way of more money over telling a better story. And a book in its most fundamental definition is the container of a story (yes, even nonfiction). That’s why a book is always going to be better.
Still, I’ll illustrate it with my most recent read and view – Lessons in Chemistry. This book had a clear purpose – to be a STEMist story. The challenges faced by anyone not a cis male in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics are rich for a story. This one gives us a female protagonist battling these grand challenges and more intimate challenges like love and loss.
I read an advanced reader copy of the book before it was published and I didn’t like it. That was primarily because the cover and blurb suggested a light, frothy read. Instead, it turned out to be very triggering in the first chapter. But I picked it up again this week and discovered that a reshaped book. The show is currently airing one episode a week and gives me the framework to compare the story across two media.
Lessons in Chemistry, the show presents a superhero/inept nerd in the main role. If you thought Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory, let’s remember that show was an incel fantasy. It featured geeks who objectify women, become famous, make money, talk down to everyone else and get away with it. A quick look at the forums of that show will reveal the kind of misogynists who enjoy it. Imagine pushing that idea as a feminist?
The book ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ is by Bonnie Garmus whose blurb reads:
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel Prize–nominated grudge holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
The AppleTV-produced show drops an episode each week and features Brie Larson as the protagonist. Here’s the trailer.
Advanced Reader copy review & rating: 1 star
I was looking for some light reading and heard about how hilarious Lessons in Chemistry was. The blurb sounded very promising, with a woman scientist in the early 1950s. But within the first chapter, we encounter rape, violence, sexual harassment, and schoolyard bullying. Not a good start.
The protagonist was clearly ahead of her time. She sounded like she was living in 2022 and magically transported back 70 years. None of the social mores of the time, regarding women & sexual politics are acceptable by today’s standards. Thus someone challenging that status quo would have to work through their own internal conditioning & have grown up expecting resistance at every step. We don’t see any of that in her.
And finally, none of this was funny. Maybe in another mood, I’d have powered through the book, just as ‘a piece of interest’. But I’m coming off a year of reading much more factual, relevant feminist work so this just feels unnecessary to me.
Published book review & rating: 4 stars
I had read an ARC and the book has since been modified. I picked it up again on seeing the AppleTV show and read this alongside. The show has only aired 3 episodes so far and they’ve diverged greatly from the script, making it (I suppose) a more saleable romcom. Consuming these two in parallel helped me build a better case for this book since then. I have edited my Goodreads ratings to reflect my later thoughts.
My review for Lessons in Chemistry includes comparisons between the two formats so consider this your spoiler alert for the show as well. To read ahead, click on Page 2.
The book is ALWAYS better.