I have a new favorite book and this is it for now. The title looked vaguely familiar when I saw it in the library and I picked it up. When I started reading I realized that my wife had been reading it but she never told me how good it was or especially how funny the writing. I complained to her about not recommending it to me. This book should be on everyone's reading list. If you don't have time to read it then see the limited series of the same name on Apple TV+, but the book is definitely better and funnier.
The story is all about Elizabeth Zott. She is a brilliant chemist who has the misfortune to be a brilliant female chemist in the 50s-60s when women were not looked upon to be brilliant, but "just" housewives. She works at Hastings Research and so does another brilliant chemist, Calvin Evans, who is fortunate enough to be a male. They fall in love, get a dog that they name Six-thirty because he wakes up Elizabeth every morning a 6:30. Elizabeth does not believe in getting married. Calvin dies in an accident. Elizabeth is pregnant and has to be a single mother in an era when that was a big no-no, especially because she had not been married when she had the baby.
Hastings fires her and Elizabeth has to bring up the baby on her own without a job. Ironically, all the researchers at Hastings come to her for advice on checking up their research and she makes ends meet by charging them, quite appropriately I might add, for the advice. Elizabeth also loves to cook and her daughter shares her lunches with a friend of hers in school. This results in an altercation with the friend's father, Walter Pine, who works at a TV station that is looking to fill an afternoon spot for a cooking show. By the way, Walter's role in the TV show is acted by Paul Giamatti and he is perfect. Walter's clueless boss if portrayed in the TV show by Rainn Wilson (from The Office series) and he is great in the role too.
Walter offers Elizabeth a job as the cooking show's hostess. Elizabeth takes the job and turns it into Lessons in Chemistry (as in, add a teasopn of Sodium Chloride, not salt) and women empowerment. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's 6-year old daughter, Mad, also brillint way beyond her age, (just Mad, not Madeline, because Elizabeth was "mad" when she got pregnant) is on a quest to find out details about her father who had died before she was born. She does this by forming a friendship with Reverand Wakely, who as it turns out, was a pen-pal of the father. In all this, the dog Six-Thirty adds his own background commentary to add to the general funniness.
So, read the book. You are guaranteed to enjoy it.
