Larry H rated it  really liked it

I'm between 3.5 and 4 stars, so I'll round up.

Here's a bit of a cautionary tale for those of you who might put too much pressure on your children to
succeed academically, or those of you who push yourself too hard.

"The optimist sees the glass half full. The pessimist sees the glass half empty. The chemist sees the
glass completely full, half in liquid state and half gaseous, both of which are probably poisonous."

Chemistry is spare and slightly quirky, yet it is surprisingly profound and moving. The unnamed
narrator of Weike Wang's debut novel is a PhD student in chemistry at a university in Boston. She's
been at her studies for several years and hasn't yet had the research breakthrough that will lead to
her completing her dissertation, receiving her PhD, and hopefully getting a job, much to the chagrin
and frustration of her Chinese parents, who will accept nothing less than success from her. They
don't want excuses, delays, explanations—if she doesn't get her PhD, she's no longer their daughter.

"Ninety percent of all experiments fail. This is a fact. Every scientist has proven it. But you eventually
start to wonder if this high rate of failure is also you. It can't be the chemicals' fault, you think. They
have no souls."

As if her academic challenges weren't enough, her longtime boyfriend Eric has proposed marriage. A
fellow scientist, Eric has followed his academic dreams without any challenges, and is on the cusp of
getting a teaching job somewhere other than Boston. He doesn't understand why she can't accept the
possibility that perhaps chemistry, and maybe even science altogether, isn't right for her. All he
knows is how right they are for each other, so he can't fathom why she won't accept his proposal and
go with him wherever his job takes him, and stop allowing her parents to rule her life.

But how can she give up her dreams to follow Eric, without giving her work all she has? Can she
actually make a life with someone who has never had to struggle, whose parents support his every
move, and give him the self-belief he needs?

When the pressure becomes too much to bear, she makes a split-second decision that changes
everything. And now she has no idea what she wants, from her career, her relationship, her parents,
or herself. Should she teach? Should she marry Eric and/or move with him? Should she tell her
parents how she really feels, or work to finally make them proud of her? The dilemmas she faces turn
her into a wholly different person, one she doesn't always recognize or even like.

"Eric has said that I carry close to my chest a ball of barbed wire that I sometimes throw at other
people."
I found this really fascinating. Wang's narrator tells the story in the style of a person for whom
English is not her first language, so at times the narrative is very spare and/or stilted, but the use of
language and imagery really works here. The narrator doesn't come across as the warmest person,
but Wang gives glimpses of her vulnerability and the emotion beneath the steely surface she has built
to defend her from her parents and from those who don't believe women have a place in science.

Chemistry is definitely a quirky book that might not be for everyone. As she seeks to find answers
to problems for which answers aren't always readily available, she is finding her way, with sometimes
comical, sometimes emotional, and sometimes stoic results. She's a flawed character but one with
surprising sensitivity, and you get to understand why she hides that away.

Don't let the title scare you. I got a "D" in high school chemistry (hope my mother doesn't read this)
and vowed never to deal with that subject again, but I still found this a really compelling, beautifully
told read.
Emer rated it    ·  review of another edition
it was amazing

Shelves: 5stars, reviewed, general-fiction, own-physical-copy, read-in-2017

"A Chinese proverb predicts that for every man with great skill, there is a woman with great
beauty.
In ancient China, there are four great beauties:
The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget how to swim and sink.
The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall.
The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine.
The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom.
I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse. This
proverb is said and resaid on the day of my parents' wedding."

I never know how to write reviews about the books that I love the most. The ones that reach into the
deepest darkest parts of my soul and change me. I know that this book isn't for everyone. The prose
to me is nothing short of perfection but it is incredibly spartan. It's non-traditional in its execution of
plot, of timeline. It never truly resolves any aspect of the storyline but to me it's all the more beautiful
for that. It feels like a very honest snapshot of a life. 

The book has an unnamed female narrator who is a chemistry PhD student and it's these studies that
are the catalyst for this novel. Her research is failing, she's struggling with her love for the subject
and is battling insecurities surrounding her capabilities. 

You certainly don't have to have a background in scientific research to understand this book, you can
read it with next to no scientific knowledge and will not be lost. But for those of us who have toiled in
research this book cuts close to the bone. The plaguing doubts, the constant pressure to achieve, the
isolation of when experiments fail while those around you succeed... This book lifts the lid on the day
to day stresses of academic research... 

Words can't express how much I understood and was thoroughly moved by what I was reading
about. Research is all I've ever wanted to do but due to health reasons it can't be my path in life. Or at
least not for the foreseeable future. I will always keep my hopes alive. But for an all too brief time it
was my life and this book broke my heart because of that. Because in this book the unnamed narrator
has to step back. She steps back for different reasons than I had to but I still felt it. I felt her story as
if it were my own. 

And that's what's wonderful about this book. The unnamed narrator is the most human character
you could ever read about. She's so honest. Brutally honest. She's incredibly insecure. At times
unlikeable even. She's got a unique sense of humour and is plagued with guilt. Guilt stemming from a
need to succeed and that need not coming to fruition. 
"In Chinese, there is another phrase about love. It is not used for passionate love, but the love
between family members. In translation, it means I heart for you."

This need to succeed is seemingly tracked back to her rearing. She is the child of Chinese parents
living in America. And their overzealous values on education and success haunt her to the extent that
she can't function without them. Her life is not her own. Everything she does is for her parents more
than her. To the extent that her boyfriend can't quite understand how she doesn't just free herself
from their shackles as she is a grown woman. And when he asks her to marry him things get even
more confusing and the pressures and stresses of expectation build up even more on her.

"The moment we're back in our old apartment, he asks the first question again. Say yes.
I want to.
He asks the second question. Come with me.
I want to.
Then say yes.
Isn't it enough that I want to?"

I guess you could say this is yet another of those books about a lost twenty something searching for
the answers to life's big questions. But to me this is so much more than that because of the
authenticity of the unnamed narrator. How we get to live inside her brilliant mind; how she is
hopelessly flawed with her approach to everyday life and yet is deeply incisive about the greater
questions of life. 

I love this character with all my heart. And thusly I love this book with every fibre of my being. When
I stumbled across the blurb for it many months before its release I was optimistic that it would be a
book that I would find enjoyable. The blurb spoke to me and I had to go to a lot of effort to track
down a copy including spending A LOT more money than I would ever normally spend on a book
especially one that I hadn't read reviews of or knew anything about the author. And now I am so glad
that I spent that time and effort locating a copy of this. I would urge anyone with a love for intelligent
and quirky literary fiction to locate a copy of this for themselves. I have a hardback edition but the
paperback is due sometime in the spring. 

I'm torn as to whether or not this is my favourite book of 2017. It's between this and A Line Made by
Walking. I have a little over a month to decide but my inkling is that this will take top spot. 

An utterly brilliant debut worth every one of its five stars

_____________

I am bereft of words but so full of emotion right now. 

This was truly stunning. So sparsely written but still somehow saying so much. 

I will somehow try to formulate a coherent review of how I feel in the coming days but needless to
say this has fast tracked its way to being one of my favourite reads of the year 

BLURB:
Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of
this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than
reality. She's tormented by her failed research--and reminded of her delays by her peers, her
advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of
excellence from her throughout her life. But there's another, nonscientific question looming: the
marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia
has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can't make a life before finding success on
her own. 

Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew
about her future, and herself, behind. And for the first time, she's confronted with a question she
won't find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want? Over the next two years, this
winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different
kind of chemistry--one in which the reactions can't be quantified, measured, and analyzed; one
that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart. Taking us deep inside her
scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the
elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love
and family