Weike Wang’s debut novel “Chemistry” is a short and sensitive novel with a dynamic personal narrative. The protagonist of this novel is an unnamed girl who is struggling to get her PhD in chemistry finished soon. Her spontaneous breakdowns are portrayed vividly in the initial parts of the prose.

The PhD advisor visits my desk, sits down, brings his hands together, and asks, Where do you see your project going in five years?

Five years? I say in disbelief. I would hope to be graduated by then and in the real world with a job.

I see, he says. Perhaps then it is time to start a new project, one that is more within your capabilities.

He leaves me to it.

The desire to throw something at his head never goes away. Depending on what he says, it is either the computer or the desk.

The narrator is disturbed by her incomplete research and not achieving the breakthrough point to earn her dissertation These events make her repeatedly question if her love for chemistry was just a mere hypothesis than reality. She is constantly reminded of her work and delays by her advisor, strict parents and the lab guy who says “women lack the balls to actually do science.”

Eric, the only named character in the novel and her boyfriend who graduated a year before asks her to marry, throws the author into a bewildered state. Eric had a relatively smoother academic career and a happier family life mostly free of obstacles and now on the verge of getting a teaching job. He wants her to join him and stay with him wherever his job takes him and live a happy life.

The moment we’re back in our old apartment, he asks the first question again. Say yes. I want to. He asks the second question. Come with me. I want to. Then say yes. Isn’t it enough that I want to?

However, the narrator who is from an immigrant family in America has her own insecurities (at least for her). Her parents being from China are highly skilled, especially her father who immigrated here for a PhD and completed it in three years which was close to unachievable. He was admired for his work.

For this: my father finishes his doctorate in record time, three years, and then he gets a well-paying job.

His advisor tells him: You work the same amount as twelve full-time graduate students. If only I had twelve more like you.

This accomplishment nonetheless is not out of nothing. He was backed up by a long unhappy marriage and constant fights with the narrator’s mother. The mother was a pharmacist back in China, her mother an architect, her father a physicist. She used all her savings to sustain the family in America while his PhD tenure. She constantly taunted and reminded her husband to make it so long only because of her, which led to regular fights. She even could not continue her career owing to her very weak English. The Americans made fun of her which is sad and sometimes also funny to the narrator.

The summer before college, painters came to work on our house. My mother could never say the word painters. She says panthers. When the neighbors asked, she told them there were three panthers in the house.

The narrator’s parents expect nothing less than excellence from her and repeatedly warned her to complete her PhD if she desires to keep in contact with her parents. The narrator’s life no longer seems to be her own.

These never-ending academic and family challenges and over that her fear to follow Eric leaving her work behind seemed to be a repetition of her parents “so-called” failed marriage in her own life. This dilemma of if she should stop caring about her parents who are strict to the extent that she loses them or Eric who unconditionally loves her but has a rather simple life so far that he fails to understand her struggles is turning her into a completely different personality towards the end of the prose.

She even visits a shrink and her best friend to talk everything about Eric, her academics and her family and reach a conclusion. The narrator is overall an imperfect character who is finding her way out in life in a comical, emotional and sensitive way outside the opinions of her parents, her boyfriend and her college in Boston.

If you enjoy stories of realistic, imperfect and smart women, not even an inch closer to a “happily ever after” story, then even if you are a science novice you will surely enjoy this novel. The science references used in this humour-filled prose are quite simple to get through.