CBR15 Book 55: "Lessons in Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus

Page count: 400 pages

Rating: 5 stars

#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books recommended by friends

Elizabeth Zott is a chemist struggling to be taken seriously by her male colleagues at a lab in the 1960s. She never completed her degree because her academic advisor raped her, but her lack of degree in no way means she's not intelligent. Despite her brilliant mind, her male co-workers either treat her as nothing more than a lab assistant or steal her research and present it as their own. The one exception to this is Calvin Evans, another brilliant mind, although even more anti-social than Elizabeth. After a couple of rather unfortunate first run-ins, the couple actually begin to talk to each other and their natural chemistry proves very combustive.

However, life doesn't always play fair, and Elizabeth, who never wanted to settle down with any man and certainly never wanted children, finds herself a single mother trying to make a living from the private lab she built in her home. She's doing her best to encourage her precocious daughter, aided only by her faithful dog, Sixthirty, and eventually, a lonely housewife from across the street. Through a series of unlikely events, she becomes a television star, presenting the afternoon cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth refuses to talk down to her audience and uses scientific chemistry terms when explaining her recipes (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”), and her unlikely approach seems to spell television success. While her producer is both baffled at her technique and terrified of her blunt honesty, yet staunchly supportive nonetheless, the station manager is not as happy with Elizabeth's unconventional presenting style or lack of respect for men in general.

Having read several very glowing reviews of this, I decided to put it on my wishlist for last year's Cannonball Book Exchange. Imagine my surprise when I got a lovely hardback edition (it was even signed) from the lovely Witcherwill/Mythili. I do hope she enjoyed the Pratchett books I sent her. As is so often the case, however, even if I own a book, I don't immediately start reading it. I had every plan of getting to it this year and therefore added it to my Cannonball Passport Challenge. Anyone who has followed my blog for some time knows I cannot resist a reading challenge, and will do almost everything in my power to complete as many as possible over the course of a year. It still took me until September to finally read the book, and once I started it, it was one of those books where I pretty much resented everything that took my attention away from it. I loved it so very much, and it's always much harder to write good and articulate reviews of books that I adore. I will happily savage a book I disliked, but with books like this, I just want to flail and scream at everyone I meet to read it (I have in fact insisted that two friends and four colleagues do just that).

I wanted to finish the book before the Apple TV+ adaptation aired, and as always with adaptations, I'm wary. I think Brie Larson will do an excellent job as Elizabeth, because she's a very good actress, but I'm not sure I trust them to fully capture just how good this book is. The trailer makes it look as if they've made quite a few changes, but I will try to keep an open mind. Should it be absolutely panned, I just won't watch it and pretend it never existed in the first place.

This is most likely going to be in my top 3 books of the year. It's an international bestseller and this is well deserved. It's funny and sad and infuriating and moving and I almost wish I hadn't already read it, so I could go back and read it again for the first time. Thank you so much, Mythili, for the gift of this book. 

Judging a book by its cover: I think both covers for this book are somewhat misleading as to the sort of story you're actually getting. The American cover has a peach-coloured cover with just the hints of a woman's face, with cat's eye glasses and bright red lips. It makes the book look light-hearted and frivolous. The primary colours that make up the cover for the UK edition also seem to indicate a much more playful story, especially when you have the lady in the cheerful dress holding a television at the top. I'd heard good things about this book but was surprised at the actual contents after seeing the two covers. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

#CBR13 Book 44 : "Björnstad (Beartown)" by Fredrik Backman

Page count: 470 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

CBR13 Bingo: Sports Ball (could easily also be used as Rec'd, since a lot of Cannonballers have read and reviewed it favourably)

Official book description:

People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.

See, if even if the actual blurb hadn't mentioned a violent act against a young girl (I'm sure you can all imagine what kind of an act this is, taking place at a party full of drunken teenage athletes and the girls that admire them), this book, when not making it super clear just how essential ice hockey as a sport and especially the junior team full of promising seventeen-year-olds are to the survival of the rather remote Björnstad (literally translated as Beartown), is foreshadowing something terrible happening from very early on. 

The book is slow to start, and at first I really wasn't sure why I needed to "get to know" quite so many different characters, as the point of view in this book changes constantly between both major and more minor characters. We see the world through the eyes of several of the hot shot hockey players, through the eyes of the ex-pro hockey coach who doesn't want to fire his aging mentor despite the wishes of the team sponsors; his successful lawyer wife, who as a working mother with her own thriving career really doesn't fit well with the other wives and mothers of the town; their cheerful musician daughter; her loyal best friend (with a troubled home life); the junior coach who's looking at a pretty guaranteed promotion once the junior team most likely wins the championship, but also through the eyes of one of the former youth athletes, now a washed-up alcoholic; the agoraphobic owner of the local sports pub and others. 

Nevertheless, I kept reading, and Backman certainly made me aware of all aspects of the little community and the hopes that all of these disparate people had pinned to a few sports games. Two things are made clear very early - if the junior hockey team doesn't win the championship, any chance at revitilising the town's failing economy is completely gone, and something very bad is going to happen to the head coach's daughter at some point. As we get closer to the victory party where the terrible deed is going to take place, I was grimly determined to keep reading until I got past the bad part, just so I could get it out of the way. Imagine my surprise when I looked up, noticed that more than three hours had passed and I suddenly had only about a third of the book left. That's the advantage of the rapidly changing points of view, you keep seeing events from more than one angle and after having "inhabited" all of these different people for the first third you really feel involved in all of their hopes and dreams and their humanity and you suspect you know exactly how bad the fallout's going to be.

In reviews, I've frequently seen Backman referred to as a funny writer. This book is a pretty solid slice of social realism, but I can see why he's such a popular author, with so many fans worldwide. I don't really care about sports at all, certainly not ice hockey. I only vaguely knew the rules before reading this book, yet understood the plays described perfectly.  I personally also suck at all kinds of physical exercise - I will never reach the level of skill these young athletes, even the reserve players, yet I understood their ambition and drive. The three very different coaches, the weary school teacher, the pub owner - they felt like people I might meet walking down the street. 

Backman writes about doing a lot of research and talking to a lot of sexual assault survivors, and I think he writes about the unforgivable acts at the party and its terrible aftermath very sensitively and well. While you might imagine this book being very "male-centric", the women of Backman's book are also all distinctive and never feel like tired stereotypes. One of the hockey players lost his father at a young age, and has as a result been raised by his widowed mum and three older sisters, all very formidable. There is the coach's wife, his daughter, her best friend, not to mention several other women, both likable and rather pitiful in these pages, and again, they all felt like Backman was writing about people who actually exist.

I had not imagined a book about sexual assault and small town hockey would engross me this much. Sadly, I had to return the second book to the library before I had a chance to read it, and am still waiting for a new chance to pick it up. I know Backman has confirmed that there will be a third book to finish the series, so now I may wait until that's out and binge the final two parts in one go. 

Judging a book by its cover: I've seen a number of different covers for this book, but this is the one that was on the library copy I had. The two scenes shown on the cover might not look very exciting, but they're both taken directly from the novel and while I wasn't too impressed with it at first, I now really like the cover design. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Book 95: "Just Listen" by Sarah Dessen

Page count: 396 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 46 mins

Rating: 4 stars

While Annabel Greene may star in the local department store's back to school commercial as "The girl who has everything", she returns to school utterly ostracised, after a summer spent alone, after a disastrous party late last term where everything changed for her.

When she runs into her former best friend Sophie, undisputed Queen Bee at their school, she is met with insults and sharp comments. When she thinks back to that one night when Sophie turned against her, she throws up. The only one she sees regularly now, not that they ever speak, is the mysterious Owen Armstrong, rumoured to have a serious temper, enough to have sent him on a stint to juvie.

Despite the fact that Annabel has gone from being one of the most popular girls in school to an utter outcast, she doesn't share any of this with her family. Nor does say anything to her mother about wanting to quit modelling, even though Annabel hasn't really enjoyed doing it for ages now. Annabel is the youngest of three, with both of her older sisters having very strong personalities. Annabel became the peacekeeper, the one who tells white lies and omits to share her own discomfort just so others won't ever feel hurt or uncomfortable. Her mother struggled with depression for a while, and Annabel is terrified that now that her sisters have both quit modelling, her mother will descend back into depression if Annabel too announces that she doesn't want to do it anymore. 

Annabel's eldest sister Kirsten is a waitress/hostess in New York and studies communication part-time. She briefly shared a flat with their middle sister, Whitney, who had a very successful run modelling in the Big Apple and developed an eating disorder that left her unconscious on the bathroom floor, her emaciated body having gone into shut down. Annabel was the one who found her. Now, months later, Whitney lives at home, carefully supervised by her parents and forced into a healthy eating regime and therapy she bristles against. Even if Annabel felt that she could talk about the things that have happened to her, she doesn't really have anyone to open up to.

Eventually, Owen and Annabell start chatting during their shared lunches, and Annabell is shocked to discover that Owen never lies and strives to be honest in all things. He's been through a lot of anger management and has learned to sift through the sort of polite deflections most people offer when they don't want to be put on the spot. Through her friendship with Owen, Annabel is forced to re-evaluate her own approach to life and especially truth-telling, and she keeps having her eyes opened to new experiences thanks to Owen's truly eclectic tastes in music. Being as open and honest as Owen is utterly terrifying, however, and Annabel is already shunned and reviled by pretty much everyone. How much worse would it be if people knew what actually happened at that party back in the spring?

Sarah Dessen was never part of my adolescent reading, mainly because she published her first novel in 1996, when I was in my first year of high school, but based on this book, and The Truth About Forever (both published after I had graduated with an M.A from the University of St. Andrews and was busy trying to support myself through call centre work upon my return to Norway), which I read back in 2018, I sort of wish they had been. It's clear why she is such a popular and well-loved writer, and her books feature interesting protagonists in serious and believable situations, who really need to work through issues, yet the books never feel patronising or sanctimonious, or the plots clichéd and predictable. Was it pretty obvious to the reader within a few chapters more or less what had happened at that party that drove a wedge between Annabel and Sophie? Yes, it was, but that's not what the story is really about, so it doesn't matter whether the reader is just waiting for much of the book to have it confirmed.

I suspect reading these books as a teenager is very different from reading them as a middle-aged teacher of secondary school kids. Yet I'm pretty sure that most discerning readers, no matter their age, will be aware that Sophie is an awful, toxic person and that while Annabel is miserable and very lonely at the start of the book, she is much better off without her former "friend".  As someone who has spent much of the last few years learning to be more open, honest, and assertive, I also had great sympathy for Annabel's conflict aversion and always trying to please people. It's still incredibly hard for me to ask for help or be honest about my feelings in situations where I'm uncomfortable, especially if I'm worried about hurting someone's feelings, or that they'll get angry and upset. Like Annabel, I tend to put everyone's needs before my own, and it takes time to reprogram that. 

Both of my Sarah Dessen books have been on my actual (digital) bookshelf since mid-2015, and on my TBR for much longer. I really need to explore more of her books now, but at least one benefit of discovering her this late is that there's a big back catalogue I can explore. 

Judging a book by its cover: Since this book was first published in 2006, this book has had a number of covers, some much more appealing than others. The cover my version has is clearly very geared towards teenage girls, with the pastel pink font with the author's name, as well as the sheet on the girl's bed. A girl intently listening to music is a very suitable choice of cover image, though, as Annabel really starts getting into music through her friendship with Owen. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.