Review for "Chemistry" by Weike Wang (2017) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
An unnamed Chinese-American female grad student cuts her hair, goes into her lab and breaks five beakers, then proceeds to go on a quest to find herself. Unaffected by her indecision to accept her bf’s marriage proposal, she deals with her perfectionist parents and takes on a job as a chemistry tutor (definitely not the future her parents envisioned).
With that said, this book was just ok for me. Thankfully it’s a short book, as well as an interesting take on life, love, and work in higher education. I could certainly relate to the unnamed narrator’s struggles (I am also a full time Ph.D. student). However, this was not a very entertaining book. The writing here is sparse and there’s a lot of light-hearted, stream of conscious self-dialogue which is cool for the first part of the book, but after the first third had passed it just got to be too much, an overkill. I desperately wanted the character to come out of her head and give more of a story here.
I would read this author’s future work though. Just not my cup of tea here.
29chapters.com 