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, 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. ( )

Three stars is generous. I felt like I was reading someone's Facebook wall rather than a novel. The individual entries are fairly well written, but, to me, there was no cohesion, and, frankly, there was not a single character who evoked any feeling other than irritation. Perhaps this is a generation gap thing, but this was my Book of the Month club offering and I was sorely disappointed. Nevertheless, I have read far worse books, so this one deserves some credit ( )

Given the various "on the autism spectrum" books that are out there I thought it was weird that this was never addressed in this book, overall I liked her blunt tell it like is narrative I didn't like her that much or really care what happened to her, in fact a week later writing this I don't really remember what even happened at the end... ( )

Disjointed, but engaging. Strong voice. I'm not sure why, but I really liked it. Wonderful audiobook narration. ( )

Overall, I was offended and bored by this book. There was humor in the first part, but the second was tedious and not caring of the protagonist who was severely mentally ill. She was barely able to function and possessed little self-awareness. She received very little assistance, and I found the ending very sad. ( )