Chemistry: A Novel

by Weike Wang

PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD WINNER • WHITING AWARD WINNER • Smart, moving, and funny, a unique coming-of-age story about a quirky, overworked narrator who seems to be on the cusp of a perfect life but finds herself on a new path of discoveries about everything she thought she knew.   

"Told in a hilarious deadpan that recalls Gish Jen and Nora Ephron." —O, The Oprah Magazine

At first glance, the life of the narrator of Weike Wang’s debut novel seems ideal: she is studying for a prestigious PhD in chemistry that will make her Chinese parents proud (or at least satisfied), and her successful, supportive boyfriend has just proposed to her. But instead of feeling hopeful, she is wracked with ambivalence: the long, demanding hours at the lab have created an exquisite pressure cooker, and she doesn’t know how to answer the marriage question. Soon it all becomes too much and her life plan veers off course....

• ISBN10: 0525432221
• ISBN13: 9780525432227
• Publish Date: 3 April 2018 (first published 23 May 2017)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525432227

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

This is for all the subdued quiet girls, the ones that are so used to being the successful smart one and suddenly finding themselves struggling.

Chemistry is unlike anything I've ever read before. The only name we learn is Eric. Eric the brilliant chemist that wants to marry the narrator. Everyone else is the best friend, the lab partner, the math student.

Narrator has a dysfunctional family with unhappily married parents with strict and high expectations. She's a chemist struggling through her dissertation and breaking. She's analytical and her narration remains drily detached from typical emotional reactions and descriptions.

Does she love chemistry enough? Does she love Eric enough? Will it be enough? What is "enough"?

I love all the science facts, descriptions, and analogies she used. I loved the therapy and teaching sessions. There's lots of great turns of phrases like,"My bones are weak and I'm lactose intolerant."

There's no real ending and if you're not paying attention, that last line will mean nothing. It kinda feels like nothing anyways without an answer but it's a step.

I have a head cannon of what happens next. And I'm sticking to it.

Notes Made While Listening:
Interesting tense
Eric is ginger, she is Chinese
Eric is "perfect" and she is hesitant
"the best friend" and "the lab partner"
dissolution of a 4 year relationship breakdown
"you mean nothing to me without the degree"
"My bones are weak and I'm lactose intolerant."
just get glasses!!
Dry but fascinating, like listening to the Grinch grow a heart
Awww poor best friend
"coming back to visit as a friend"
Then it ends.

[Quirky Cat]

Three and a half stars

Chemistry is a thought provoking tale about a woman trying to find herself and resolve who and what she wants to be in life. The novel reads more as a stream of consciousness than as an actual story, but it adds charm and character and gives the reader a better impression of (the unnamed) narrator and her way of thinking. The narrator flits back and forth between humorous moments and heavy thoughts, creating an impression of how her mind works.
The reader is provided with an in depth view of what happens to a child that receives too much pressure from her parents to meet their very high expectations and standards. Along with facts about her life, the narrator includes Chinese idioms and beliefs, as well as (sometimes corny, but still charming) chemistry jokes.
If you’re looking for something quirky and original, this is the book for you. If you’re looking for something structured and with a more formal plot, maybe reconsider reading this one. You definitely have to be in the right mindset to enjoy this book. Either way it is a very quick read, totaling at only 224 pages, with slightly wider than average margins, so it doesn’t require much of an investment time wise.



At first I was pretty put off by the writing format of the book, but as I got farther in it became less and less of a bother. I can’t say I’d call it one of my favorites, but I am pleased I gave it the change regardless.
Chemistry follows a woman who is trying to resolve whether or not she should continue to seek her PhD in, well, chemistry. After a breakdown forces her to take some time away from her schoolwork (and by that I mean the school made her take the break), she’s lost with little to no drive to discover what her life is missing. Thanks to her parents, she’s too terrified to come to terms with the fact that chemistry isn’t for her, knowing that they will not accept this news at all.
Even though I didn’t know the main character’s name, I couldn’t help but feel so awful for her when reading about her childhood experiences. While she insists her parents weren’t bad people they clearly weren’t the best people, never truly considering what her wants or needs were. Instead expectations and demands were heaped on her with little support to meet them. Still, she refuses to even resent her parents, a fact that comes up frequently during her therapy sessions.
I loved her little chemistry jokes, as well as seeing how she interpreted the world. These moments came out the strongest when she was tutoring, so I’m grateful there were many of these described. She sounds like a peculiar instructor – whether that would make her a good or bad tutor I cannot say.
It was really beautiful seeing her come to terms with where she is in life, versus where she wants to be (or more accurately, where her parents want her to be). While we’re not given a solid conclusion, I like the open ended nature to it. It allowed to me to come up with my own ending, suiting what I felt she needed and deserved.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[gmcgregor]

Coming from an adult perspective, I think it's silly that we expect 16 year olds to have any idea what they might want to do for the rest of their lives. I think of myself as being pretty smart, but it turned out what I was sure I wanted to do at 16 was incredibly wrong for me. And the protagonist (never named) of Weike Wang's Chemistry is in kind of a similar boat. Pursuing a Ph.D. in, of course, chemistry at a prestigious New England university, she has a bit of a meltdown as her experiment fails to produce results. Although she does love the field, she begins to question her choices about everything in life as she takes time off of her program.

There's not a lot of "plot" in this book, really. The protagonist is trying to decide what to do about her long-term relationship with a fellow chemist who has proposed to her but she's not sure she wants to marry, trying to figure out how to support herself without her graduate student stipend, being there for her best friend through pregnancy and early motherhood and marriage crises, and figuring out when and how and if to tell her Chinese immigrant parents that she's not in school anymore. It is this last matter that most preoccupies her, and much of the book is made up of her recollections of her childhood, of her parents' relationships with each other and with her, of the pressure she feels to succeed in the ways that they value in order to validate their sacrifices.

Stories like these illustrate the power of "own voices": an Asian-American woman telling the story of an Asian-American woman. A lot of non-Asians look to them as a so-called "model minority", hard workers somehow naturally gifted at math and science. Of course the reality behind that is more complicated, and Wang pulls back the curtain on what might seem like a neat little family of a scientist, a housewife, and their scientist daughter to show the internal workings that are just as messy as anyone's home life.

That being said, evaluating Chemistry on its novelistic merits reveals a book that is good but not great, and quite obviously a debut, though a promising one. Our nameless narrator is at times rather formless, and mostly reacts to the events around her rather than being proactive. She's very unsure of herself after breaking out a track that she found herself in more than chose, and while that's understandable, it makes her hard to really get enough of a feel for to connect with much. But Wang's writing is sure and emotionally true, and I enjoyed this book and would recommend it, especially to 20somethings that are wondering if they're on the right track.