CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang

This is the first novel I’ve read in a while in just one day.  In fact, I read most of it in one sitting, but it’s even shorter than the page count indicates.  The unnamed Chinese-born female narrator in Boston has gone off the rails while working on her PhD chemistry project that she fears she will never be able to finish.  Her adviser recommends that she pursue a different topic, but instead she just abandons school and takes up tutoring.  Her long-suffering, always optimistic, live-in boyfriend Eric is way too patient with her but eventually accepts a job at Oberlin College in Ohio.  The narrator seeks the help of a therapist and pours out all of her resentment against her over-achieving father and unreliable mother, both unaffectionate and constantly fighting, whom she can’t bring herself to tell that she has dropped out of school.  Her best friend, also unnamed, lives in New York with her very successful husband and newborn baby, living the married life that the narrator is not sure that she wants for herself, especially when the husband moves out to live with another woman.  My take on this is that the narrator is trying to find her way in life and isn’t sure that she has what it takes to be a true scientist.  The specter of her parents’ bitter marriage has stood in the way of her commitment to Eric, so that now she is basically committed to nothing.  My favorite thing about this novel is that there are more scientific nuggets of information than I can even remember, but they are all fascinating.  The narrator spends one entire tutoring session talking about color.  In another session, she describes how radium was originally used to paint glow-in-the-dark watches.  The painters would rinse their brushes by putting them in their mouths!  Needless to say, radium is very toxic, even in dead bodies.