Publisher: Penguin Books
Source: Borrowed from library [ Goodreads ]
Blurb:
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.
But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fueled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation. And soon a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time.
This book was HUGE when it first came out a few years ago, maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it then and allowed myself to be swept up in the adoration for it but when I started reading it I felt it was just not the book I had been hoping for.
Framed as a feminist masterpiece, we see Elizabeth Zott go through tragedy after tragedy in her life. She is ridiculed for being odd, not respected for being a female scientist, experiences abuse at the hands of men and still perseveres to progress her career which she loves.
I felt the pacing of the book and the detached tone of the story, which albeit may be consistent with the protagonist's own way of thinking, just left me feeling at arms length from everything that happened and not very emotionally invested.
The science speak was almost over the top and after a while I got pretty tired of all the characters referring to salt and vinegar as "sodium chloride (NaCl) and acetic acid". C'mon people let's get real - this was incredibly unrealistic and yes I know it is a fiction book but my mind just couldn't stretch to this.
The feminism seemed very "white feminism" in terms of its attitude towards 1950's inequality just boiling down to "just go out there and do it!". This really took the biscuit for me when a woman in the audience of the show said she wanted to go to medical school but couldn't because she was an uneducated woman who was expected to stay at home and raise her children and be a homemaker for her husband. Elizabeth Zott just told her to go for it and suddenly at the end of the book announced that woman had somehow become a licensed doctor? I'm sorry it was just too much for me.6
The novel was not boring although with plenty happening constantly in the plot, and I did enjoy reading about the characters - especially the daughter and the dog both of whose perspectives we were able to read from. That was very enjoyable.
Overall though, this novel fell very flat for me. I seem to be in the minority with this opinion, so apologies if this was your favourite book, but I just could not feel grounded in my reading experience at all. Too fantastical for fiction, unfortunately. I also tried to watch the tv show and just couldn't get into it.
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