Book 134: Chemistry

"Ninety percent of all experiments fail. This is 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."

Dates read: March 18-21, 2017

Rating: 7/10

When I was in middle school, I decided I wanted to be a lawyer. I had always been the kind of kid for whom "bad behavior" most directly translated into "mouthing off", and I loved to play devil's advocate, and I was stubborn like an ox. I was captain of the mock trial team in high school, and I really thought being a lawyer was exactly what I wanted. Until I got to law school, which I hated. And then started practicing, which I hated even more. Figuring out that I needed to go another way is a decision I'm constantly thankful I made.

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 (it's as much a result of the kinds of immigrants that tend to leave Asia behind to travel to America as much as anything else), 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.

Tell me, blog friends...did you end up doing what you thought you would at 16?

One year ago, I was reading: The Year of Living Biblically

Two years ago, I was reading: Song of Achilles

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Book 134: Chemistry

Book 133: Green Girl

"She is such a trainwreck. But that's why we like to watch. The spectacle of the unstable girl-woman. Look at her losing it in public."

Dates read: March 15-18, 2017

Rating: 6/10

I'm a mostly pretty together person these days. I'm married to the person with whom I've been in a long-term relationship for years now, we have a dog, we have steady white-collar jobs. We enjoy our wine and beer, but I can count the number of hangovers I've had in the past year on one hand. I write a book blog, that's how cozily normal I am. It wasn't always so. My 32 year-old self is a much, much different person than my 22 year-old self. At 22, I was a mess. I partied often, drank more than anyone would consider reasonable, and I made some questionable decisions about who I chose to invest my energy in. I never got into any sort of actual trouble, but things were a little sloppy there for a while.

I think a lot of young women go through unanchored periods like this (and young men, for that matter). Stumbling around trying to figure out who and what we are, what we want, where we belong. Kate Zambreno's Green Girl focuses on this exact time of life. Ruth, an American in her early 20s, is living in London and working at Harrod's, which she's nicknamed Horrid's, selling perfume. Ruth's insecurities about herself and her place in the world are reflected even in what kind of wares she hocks. She's not assigned to the fancy prestige brands, but rather the celebrity scent of a teenage American pop star.

Ruth is recovering from the dual shocks of losing her mother and the end of an intense, damaging relationship, and is desperately lonely. She's "friends" of sorts with a young Australian woman who lives down the hall in the rooming house she lives in. There's little real connection between them, but at least it's another person to spend time with. Ruth makes some hesitant stabs at new relationships, but between the two men who both treat her as an object in their own way (one by putting her on a worshipful pedestal, and the other as a muse for his own artistic ambition), she can't actually bond with anyone. She knows she's stuck, but has no idea how to free herself.

Green Girl is relatively simple in terms of plot, but I found it challenging in its own way. It's not structured like a typical novel: each section (there are many, I don't believe any are longer than 10 or so pages) is prefaced by a quotation from another author writing about young womanhood. Zambreno's own writing is almost like prose poetry, short interlinked paragraphs that are about as much about the feeling they capture as moving the story forward. It's not even as much a portrait of Ruth as a character as it is a portrait of what it is to be struggling into womanhood in one's early 20s, feeling the openness of one's potential future to be as much threat as promise.

I was initially put off by it and was glad that at least it was short so I wouldn't be spending undue amounts of time on something I found alienating, but eventually I got used to its rhythm and once I got there it was hard to put down. Although she's not a strongly drawn character, Ruth's aching sadness comes across so vividly that watching her stumble and make mistakes is heart-wrenching. It's an odd little book, and its flaws (the lack of character development and story structure) are real, but it has power. I'd recommend it if you're down for something a little less conventional or had a messy time of it in your 20s.

Tell me, blog friends...do you prefer novels that play with form or are you a traditionalist?

One year ago, I was reading: Shattered

Two years ago, I was reading: Zodiac

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Book 133: Green Girl