At some point when I was at university I realised that I couldn’t cook. My mum is an excellent cook and she advised me to ‘go back to basics’, which obviously made sense, and yet… I didn’t. What I actually did was remind myself that I had completed Year 12 chemistry, and cooking was essentially the same thing. So I approached cooking with precision (my mum is an intuitive cook, which I eventually understood comes with experience), and I managed well from there onward.

Which leads me to Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – it’s hardly worth reviewing this book because I’m fairly sure that everyone bar me has read it. I read a sample chapter back in 2022 – it didn’t appeal at all so I never bothered. Except that it turned up on the Literary Wives rotation… and so, I tackled this story about a woman, Elizabeth, living in the early 1960s – chemist, mother, rower, star of a cooking show (but not a wife – although the book has plenty to say about wives in general). Continue reading →