12 minute read
LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY by Bonnie Garmus
lessons in chemistry
Eddie’s touch, yet he was determined, too, that the nobility of their bond not be tainted by neurosis.” When the story returns to its contemporary setting, capped off by a brief coda at the class of 1967’s 50th reunion, Galassi reveals how this sexual repression has damaged the lives of Sam and his friends—in Sam’s case, a marriage that produced a child has ended when it could no longer endure the truth of his sexual orientation—but at least hints at the possibility of recovery in late middle age. While the novel could have benefited from the elimination of some peripheral characters, Galassi’s understated style and economical prose are well suited to this elegiac story.
A thoughtful exploration of the lingering effects of repressed sexual identity.
LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
Garmus, Bonnie Doubleday (400 pp.) $28.95 | April 5, 2022 978-0-385-54734-5
Two chemists with major chemistry, a dog with a big vocabulary, and a popular cooking show are among the elements of this unusual compound. At the dawn of the 1960s, Elizabeth Zott finds herself in an unexpected position. She’s the star of a television program called Supper at Six that has taken American housewives by storm, but it’s certainly not what the crass station head envisions: “ ‘Meaningful?’ Phil snapped. ‘What are you? Amish? As for nutritious: no. You’re killing the show before it even gets started. Look, Walter, it’s easy. Tight dresses, suggestive movements...then there’s the cocktail she mixes at the end of every show.’ ” Elizabeth is a chemist, recently forced to leave the lab where she was doing important research due to an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Now she’s reduced to explaining things like when to put the steak in the pan. “Be sure and wait until the butter foams. Foam indicates that the butter’s water content has boiled away. This is critical. Because now the steak can cook in lipids rather than absorb H2O.” If ever a woman was capable of running her own life, it’s Elizabeth. But because it’s the 1950s, then the ’60s, men have their sweaty paws all over both her successes and failures. On the plus side, there’s Calvin Evans, world-famous chemist, love of her life, and father of her child; also Walter Pine, her friend who works in television; and a journalist who at least tries to do the right thing. At the other pole is a writhing pile of sexists, liars, rapists, dopes, and arrogant assholes. This is the kind of book that has a long-buried secret at a corrupt orphanage with a mysterious benefactor as well as an extremely intelligent dog named Six-Thirty, recently retired from the military. (“Not only could he never seem to sniff out the bomb in time, but he also had to endure the praise heaped upon the smug German shepherds who always did.”) Garmus’ energetic debut also features an invigorating subplot about rowing.
A more adorable plea for rationalism and gender equality would be hard to find.
LIKE A SISTER
Garrett, Kellye Mulholland Books/Little, Brown (336 pp.) $28.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-316-25670-4
When her estranged ex–reality-star younger sister turns up shoeless and dead of an overdose on a Bronx playground, Lena Scott has to prove to herself—and everyone else—that it was not an accident.
Lena may be just 28, but she’s as hard-boiled as a millennial gets. A loner, she hasn’t had a relationship with her hip-hop–mogul father since she was 4; her mother and grandmother both died five years ago; and she hasn’t seen her best friend, who’s burying herself in a master’s program in nonprofit management at Columbia, in a year. A fan of friends with benefits, she’s “never been big on relationships.” She doesn’t even do
social media except to keep tabs on her sister, Desiree, another exile from her life after Desiree’s DUI two years ago. Since the police have zero interest in pursuing what Lena knows are suspicious circumstances around Desiree’s demise, she hits the streets, uptown and down, by foot and bike, mass transit, and Uber, tracking down leads with baby sister’s friends, flings, and— uncomfortably for her—family. If the first 60 pages have a few too many implausibilities (ubiquitous dashing reporters) and bad similes (“her eyes were as dry as my sex life”) and the last 60 devolve into eye-glazing digital forensics (“I was about to close Safari when I noticed the GoFundMe site”) and a rushed, toopat end, everything in between crackles. The writing is sharp, the commentary wry, and Lena is irresistible: “I’d never wanted to see a cop more in my twenty-eight years of being Black.”
Come for the not-so-bad whodunit, stay for the whipsmart, heart-hurt, very entertaining heroine.
SISTER STARDUST
Green, Jane Hanover Square Press (304 pp.) $26.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-335-42578-2
A small-town British girl relocates to London, where she gets involved with a fast crowd that introduces her to psychedelic drugs, free love, and complicated questions. In 1960s England, Claire Collins has long yearned to leave rural Dorset and build a bigger life full of glamour. When her widowed father remarries, her desire to hit the road only intensifies. After a particularly nasty fight with her stepmother, Claire boards the first train to London with little more than pocket money and determination. After a dicey beginning, she finds lodging in a hostel and a job working as a shopgirl. Then she meets John McKenna, a young man with connections to the burgeoning British music scene. Before long, John is introducing Claire to one celebrity after another, well-known musicians and famous groupies. On a whim, Claire’s new famous friends bring her to Morocco, where she meets Talitha Getty, the wife of enormously wealthy Paul Getty. As Claire falls under the dizzying spell of riches and nonstop parties, she tries everything her new friends offer her, from LSD to opium and orgies. The more deeply entrenched she becomes, the more she begins to wonder whether the new life she’s created for herself contains more pitfalls than prizes. Chock-full of vibrant historical details about London and Morocco in the 1960s, Green’s first foray into historical fiction does not disappoint. The novel shines brightest when Claire, who narrates, first arrives in London and again when she forms her initial impressions of Morocco. Green portrays the scenery and atmosphere so vividly that readers will be instantly transported. The descriptions of Marrakech, with its bright colors and beautiful architecture, present an especial sensory delight. While Claire seems to believe the story she tells is about Talitha, the narrative is really about an average girl’s brief brush with fame during an unprecedented time, tackling difficult questions of self-doubt, fulfillment, and individual purpose—complete with cameo appearances by Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and a host of others.
A provocative story about youth culture during the 1960s, overflowing with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
TELL ME AN ENDING
Harkin, Jo Scribner (448 pp.) $27.00 | March 1, 2022 978-1-982164-32-4
Five people are impacted by their connections to a memory-removal clinic in this debut novel.
In an alternate near present, a tech company called Nepenthe offers a memory erasure procedure straight out
of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Nepenthe patients can elect whether to remain aware they had a memory erased or to forget it ever happened. When new research suggests memories might not be permanently erasable—that they may naturally regenerate—the phenomenon of memory “traces” rollicks Nepenthe with controversy, prompting the company to offer memory restorations. Noor, a doctor at the flagship Nepenthe clinic outside London, begins to mistrust her supervisor, Louise, after observing some shady behavior regarding restorations. The narrative follows four additional characters, each from a close third-person perspective: Mei, a young woman in Kuala Lumpur who believes she is experiencing traces; Finn, an architect in Arizona who suspects his wife erased the memory of an extramarital affair; Oscar, a man in Marrakech who barely has any memory of who he is; and William, an ex-cop in West Sussex who wants to remove a memory that is causing him PTSD. The premise is intriguing and becomes more compelling as it progresses (particularly pertaining to Louise’s psychology), but the story takes a while to pick up steam. The present-tense narration drifts around in time, heavy on abstract questions and light on descriptive scenes, making it tough to stay grounded in the action. Harkin frequently describes each characters’ confusion—“Louise, what have you done? / Why did you do it? / What’s next?” asks Noor, on three separate lines—but struggles to differentiate their voices in other meaningful ways. References to philosophers like Sartre, Hume, and Locke aim for cleverness and depth, hitting the mark as often as not.
Interconnected storylines all arrive at the same conclusion: Messing with memory is messy business.
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THE GOLDEN COUPLE
Hendricks, Greer & Sarah Pekkanen St. Martin’s Press (336 pp.) $20.49 | March 8, 2022 978-1-2502-7320-8
This Washington thriller achieves suspense mostly through misdirection. At one point, a character wonders what another is really up to, but most of the characters here actually have hidden agendas. Case in point: Avery Chambers. As a therapist, she’s gone rogue, having lost her license thanks to unorthodox methods that include a combination of detective work, with all the data-mining and surveillance that entails, and prescriptive advice. She tells clients what to do—and sometimes does it for them. Matthew Bishop, a high-powered Washington lawyer, and Marissa, his wife, come to Avery for help. At the first session, Marissa confesses to infidelity with, she lies, a guy from her gym. Suddenly, this “curated Instagram” marriage is on the rocks. Can Avery salvage the relationship in her trademark 10 sessions and done? She cases the gym in question, the Bishops’ opulent residence in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and looks into Marissa’s boutique and her slightly unhinged shop assistant, Polly. There’s more to Marissa’s story than meets the eye, Avery thinks, somewhat superfluously. The truth could explode any chance of reconciliation. At times, Avery’s tactics seem unusually cruel, even sexist: She busts up one marriage where the wife is unduly controlling but appears to ignore her own initial suspicion that Matthew might be that way, too. Avery’s intrusiveness has made enemies, among them drug company Acelia, which she’s reported to the FDA on behalf of one of her clients who hesitated to be a whistleblower. The Acelia subplot feels superfluous, but it must be pivotal, because it takes up so much space while telling elements of backstory are withheld. There are some sharply observed class dynamics, and the final reversal is unexpected—but only because it is not foreshadowed. There’s a thin line between gaslighting characters and gaslighting readers, and this novel crosses it.
Replete with “huh?” moments.
SEARCH
Huneven, Michelle Penguin Press (400 pp.) $26.00 | April 26, 2022 978-0-593-30005-3
What goes on behind the scenes of the search for a Unitarian minister becomes book fodder for a Southern California writer. Huneven shows her range with a folksy, funny fifth novel on the unlikely subject of how bad decisions happen to good committees. Food writer, memoirist, and donkey owner Dana Potowski is casting about for an idea for her next book when she’s beset by “search committee ideation”—the urge to join the select group of her fellow congregants that will spend one year choosing the next minister of the Arroyo Unitarian Universalist Community Church. What’s more, she’ll write a book about it! After all, there are books about “a year of having sex every day; a year of not generating any trash, of not buying anything”—why not this? Readers with no a priori interest in church politics may have their doubts, but Huneven makes this deep dive into the workings of the modern committee process and the politics of Unitarianism engaging and thought-provoking. The voting, the vetting, the drama, the discord, the anti-oppression training— it’s all here. Her large cast—eight search committee members, a great number of prospective ministers, and several pewsful of others—is carefully constituted to embrace every age group and type, from the tattooed to the senescent, people of color, polyamorists, addicts, and a few members of the good old White heteropatriarchy. A James Beard–awarded food writer herself, Huneven gives her characters wonderful meals at home and in restaurants and includes a selection of complicated but delicious-sounding recipes at the end. A few caveats: The
presentation of the novel as a surreptitiously created memoir doesn’t add much; plotlines about a past friendship and a possible romance are weak.
Like the lamb shank at the cafeteria: tender, salty, and worthy of note.
ELEUTHERIA
Hyde, Allegra Vintage (336 pp.) $17.00 paper | March 8, 2022 978-0-593-31524-8
A young woman journeys to a remote island camp hailed as the solution for climate disaster. In addition to the global environmental problem, 22-year-old Willa Marks has many problems of her own: Her paranoid parents died by joint suicide when she was 17, after which she was sent to Boston to live with her self-obsessed cousins. Yearning for a place to belong, Willa splits her time among her menial cafe job, the pseudo-anarchist Freegans, and Harvard sociologist Sylvia Gill, the mysterious woman who becomes her companion, then lover. After a nasty fight about how Sylvia isn’t as committed to progressive causes as she claims to be, Willa locks herself in Sylvia’s office and finds a copy of Living the Solution, a guidebook describing a place called Camp Hope, “humanity’s best shot for changing course” from its current track of climatological and general doom. Sparked with new purpose, Willa travels to the Bahamian island of Eleutheria, where Camp Hope is located. She discovers that everyone there can also disappoint her, from the icy crew members to mythlike leader Roy Adams, but she tries to remain committed to the cause. Will they achieve their ambitious goal of launching Camp Hope and saving the dying planet, or is it truly too late? The nonlinear narrative wends its way from the events of Willa’s past to her time at Camp Hope and after; sporadic flashbacks to Eleutheria’s founding bog things down further. The buildup of Sylvia and Willa’s complex relationship is well written, sure to please
