A book about the travails of a brilliant chemist and single mother enduring the sexism and crushing attitudes of the 1950s could be a grim struggle, but this is anything but. Elizabeth Zott’s genuine disbelief in the utterly illogical attitudes of the time and her determined, analytical approach to her life make for extremely entertaining and uplifting reading, in spite of the all-too-recognisable condescension and abuse she suffers. Bonnie Garmus manages to make the book genuinely funny while tackling these issues head on.
Part of the attraction is Garmus’s clever use of three different minds which look in shocked disbelief at the more absurd social mores. There is Elizabeth herself, her prodigiously brilliant 4-year-old daughter Madeleine who has a child’s innocent “But why?” approach to things, and their dog Six-Thirty, whom they teach to understand quite a large vocabulary (like “diary”, which he deduces is a book in which people write vicious things about their friends and family and then pray that none of them ever read it) and to whom a lot of the behaviour he sees is simply ridiculous.
The ending was just a touch cloying for me, but I still thought it was a brilliant, hugely enjoyable book that makes points which, as current events keep reminding us, still need to be made.
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