Chemistry
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.5
(142)
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 MagazineAt 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....
AD
Buy now:
More Details:
Author
Weike Wang
Pages
224
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published Date
2017-05-23
ISBN
1524731757 9781524731755
Community ReviewsSee all
"I didn't enjoy reading this book and I thought the ending was very unsatisfying. "
Sarah
"It’s the second chemistry themed fiction I read this summer, by coincidence. Wang’s narrator describes chemistry and science in a real relatable way as someone who studied STEM, with witty observations of often the mundane daily objects and phenomenon, unlike Lessons in Chemistry where pages of scientific facts and theorems feel like forceful injection from Wikipedia to up the word count. Perhaps because it’s so relatable to my own story, I like this book so much more, while Lessons in Chemistry I struggled to enjoy all the way to the predictable eye rolling end. I do hope Wang has a better ending for this book though. What now? I want to ask(scream), mostly asking for myself about my life."
K G
Kai G
