I think I’ve used this idea before, but it’s certainly true of this book. Lessons in Chemistry should come with a black box warning: THE AUTHOR ASSUMES NO LIABILITY FOR READERS WHO LOST SLEEP, SKIPPED WORK, FORGOT TO EAT, OR NEGLECTED CHILDCARE DUTIES BECAUSE THEY FELT COMPELLED TO CONTINUE READING NONSTOP. This novel is at once laugh-out-loud funny, disturbingly poignant, and spot-on in its acerbic observations of human nature and society.

Set in the late 50s and early 60s, it tells the tale of brilliant chemist, Elizabeth Zott, whose intellect and talent a male-dominated world refuses to acknowledge. After defending herself from sexual assault by the head of a university’s Science Department, she is summarily expelled from school without a degree. She lands a job at the Hastings Research Institute, where her original work “must be the product of the man she’s in love with,” and is ultimately stolen and published by another man. Along the way, she becomes pregnant “out-of-wedlock,” (in the eyes of her employer, a crime located somewhere between murder and kidnapping), and is fired immediately. Eventually, she winds up as the host of a cooking show on afternoon TV, Supper at Six, where, in addition to lecturing her female audience on the chemical composition of the foods and additives they so mindlessly ingest, she provides them with recipes for skewering the status quo.

Lessons in Chemistry is full of unforgettable characters, not the least of which are Six-Thirty, a German Shepherd who flunked out of the police academy’s bomb-sniffing squad, and “Mad” Zott, Elizabeth’s precocious child, the brainy bane of her Kindergarten teacher.

Author Garmus has written a novel as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, as entertaining as it is thought-provoking. If you haven’t read it already (per usual, I’m late out of the gate), start today! Then share it with someone you love.