Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Eine Frage der Chemie

This book is honestly just a bit of fun. It is a highly dramatised reflection on how women are viewed and treated as subservient, incapable & good for only one thing. The protagonist, Elizabeth Zott, is hilarious, determined and gutsy.

I would advise anyone with a history of sexual assault to tread lightly with this one, but otherwise think the dry humour and darkness balance each other out well. The way Zott & Calvin fell in love gave me 'the ick,' and I thought that Calvin's family storyline and the rushed ending took away from it a bit.

Favourite quotes:

"Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do."

"I think [religion] teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; the ultimately, we're not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it."

"It was her confidence, the certainty of who she was. She sowed it like a seed until it took root in others."

"Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet. There was a certain amount of give and take as the visitor learned your ways and you learned theirs, but gradually their ways faded and your ways stuck. Which she found regrettable. Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw the magic in the extraordinary."

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jdromsky's review against another edition

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emotional funny informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I picked this book because so many people told me it was “amazing!” and it was good, but I think it was a little overhyped. I thought that Elizabeth Zott did not develop as a character nearly as much as the others, which was the most frustrating because we spent the most time with her.

I also though

the ending where Elizabeth meets Calvin’s mom was very anticlimactic and felt very much like a tag on. I wanted it to end after Elizabeth quit Supper at Six, and just to see a bit of how she embraced the life she had or was going to make for herself. I wanted to see her MAKE A LIFE for herself rather than have another thing handed to her by Calvin’s mom no less.

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dreezy's review against another edition

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emotional tense slow-paced

Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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bookforestsprite's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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victoriastarkid's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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karkei's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I forget how much women in the past had to fight for the rights we enjoy today. The inequalities have in no way been eradicated, but I feel so fortunate to be living in the time that I do.

Elizabeth Zott is not exactly a lovable character - she is stubborn and she is odd. But she definitely earned my respect.

The book was a page-turner. What an exciting premise. I would say that reading the blurb, I wanted to read more about how Zott changed the women’s lives though. I think it would have been interesting to see more of the lives of the women behind the screen watching her and the little impacts they made in their own lives, rather than the huge focus on Zott’s life itself. It would have been a better balance - less about how she got to Supper at Six, but more on how the show or Zott herself made an impact on others.

The reason I say this is because it was almost ironic that this story that supposedly champions women ended up being more about a man (Calvin Evans). Evans was the huge catalyst behind Zott’s story, his death was central to the plot and his childhood was what ended up giving Evans the life she wanted. I didn’t enjoy that.

Also, another little critique I have is that Zott’s beauty was brought up quite a lot. I know that they were trying to emphasize that men looked at beauty a certain way back then, but for the sake of the story, I think the story wouldn’t have changed much without the mention of beauty (e.g. Frask also got assaulted and went through something similar to Zott, even when she was highlighted to be quite unattractive). This is particularly the case when considering how Garmus went to great lengths to emphasize Evans’ unattractiveness. It was almost like Garmus herself was putting Elizabeth into a box and claiming she got where she did because a woman’s beauty helps her.

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chronic_listener's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative sad medium-paced

4.5

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