Lab Girl in Around the Year in 52 Books

May 04, 2017 Jacqie rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book wasn't what I expected.

I expected a book that focused on the author's scientific research. I understand that she has won awards, but I still don't know what she won them for.

Instead, chapters on botany alternate with chapters of the author's life. And it seems she's had an interesting life! I did really relate to her upbringing in the emotionally repressed northern Midwest- my parents are from North Dakota. She seemed to key in on those feelings really well.

After that, though, it fel This book wasn't what I expected.

I expected a book that focused on the author's scientific research. I understand that she has won awards, but I still don't know what she won them for.

Instead, chapters on botany alternate with chapters of the author's life. And it seems she's had an interesting life! I did really relate to her upbringing in the emotionally repressed northern Midwest- my parents are from North Dakota. She seemed to key in on those feelings really well.

After that, though, it felt like she didn't want to get too deep too often. She goes through her stint at a hospital pharmacy, her graduate degree and her first positions at different universities. She talks a lot about how much she loves her labs, how they are her true home, and how funky the average lab set-up actually is- a Frankenstein's hodge-podge of whatever can be scavenged and put to new use.

What she doesn't talk about is what she actually does in those labs, other than hang out with her platonic partner Bill, stay up really late, and eat food probably better left uneaten.

I expected a book about scientific method and discovery. And she does talk just a bit about the scientific mindset. But it's really a personal memoir. And the memoir felt a bit off to me.

Hope meets her partner Bill when she is a graduate student. They are simpatico, apparently, and he follows her to the various positions she garners. Often, he has no place to live other than either his car or the lab. Hope transcribes a lot of dialogue, I think because she wants us to see how funny she is and how quirky they are. However, things felt more and more off to me. I didn't think a lot of this stuff was funny and in fact was beginning to feel worried about Bill's mental health.

It turns out that Hope Jahren has mental health issues of her own. She's bipolar, a fact that I could have used a few chapters earlier as I was wondering what the hell she was thinking with some of her choices. Maybe perky and upbeat is the way she chooses to frame this to herself, but nonetheless bipolarity is really a serious issue. Jahren obviously loves her friend Bill and I suspect that she's kept some things back about him and his mental health as well. I can understand that- it's her book, and while he's part of her life he may understandably want some privacy- but it felt like there were some huge holes in the fabric of her story.

Since Bill is such a huge part of Hope's life, color me surprised when I abruptly read that she married another guy! Bill had actually been living with her for part of the time that these two were getting together, although he eventually found his own lodgings. I understand that it's perfectly okay to have a close platonic friendship with someone of the opposite sex, and I'm grateful for my close male friends. However, it seemed like boundaries were not a thing for these two and it actually bothered me when Hope wrote about her husband and her, newly married, going to Bill's house and asking him out. I think she was trying to show how they wanted to include Bill, but it felt almost cruel to him. From what the book says, she is by far the most important person in his life and pushing the new husband in his face didn't seem like the right move to me.

In short, I could have done with a little less snappy dialogue between Bill and Hope and a bit more of the work that they did and still do together. I also had a hard time parsing how the various chapters on botany were supposed to relate to the narrative- possibly I just wasn't paying enough attention. It's got to be hard to write memoir. How much to reveal? How much to keep private at the price of the book's depth? But I feel that as a book by a female scientist it would be great to see actual science instead of the haphazard life lived by that scientist. Honestly, I had a hard time believing in the rigor of her methodology after reading about some of the hijinks. ...more

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Dec 31, 2021 Hannah Peterson rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: aty-2021, nonfiction

I really enjoyed the sections of this book (I think they were alternating chapters which were interspersed through Jahren's story) that focused on plants, trees, and other stories about the natural world. This kind of thing was what I had been hoping for when I picked it up, since I really tend to enjoy books that include good nature writing, biology/natural history facts, or are about biologists or people studying the natural world. And I can say that this memoir does deliver on that front - I I really enjoyed the sections of this book (I think they were alternating chapters which were interspersed through Jahren's story) that focused on plants, trees, and other stories about the natural world. This kind of thing was what I had been hoping for when I picked it up, since I really tend to enjoy books that include good nature writing, biology/natural history facts, or are about biologists or people studying the natural world. And I can say that this memoir does deliver on that front - I liked the way they were written, engaging, but not overly simplified, and I was impressed by how these sections were often thematically connected to Jahren's life story, but not in a heavy handed kind of way. That part of this memoir was great.

However, I unfortunately didn't really enjoy the rest. I was expecting more about Jahren's work, which she really skims over. A lot of the book is focused on the relationship between Jahren and her lab partner, Bill, and while I appreciated the portrayal of their lifelong but platonic partnership, I kept on running into an unfortunate problem: I really didn't like reading their dialogue. Bill and Hope's friendship is built on a shared sense of humor that's a bit caustic, in my opinion. I don't think that's objectively a bad thing, and it's clear that they love that about each other, but it kind of brought me down.

I don't really read a ton of memoirs, and the ones I have read have mostly been from famous people I already knew (like Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) or people with a profoundly unique life event that really shaped the narrative arc of the story (like When Breath Becomes Air). So reading this one, where I didn't know who Hope Jahren was before reading it and where she is certainly has a unique life, but not one centered around one major event, was an interesting experience. I guess what I'm trying to say is that a book like this doesn't really have a "thesis statement" in the way When Breath Becomes Air does. So as I was reading, there would be parts I would be really interested in (like I really enjoyed reading about Jahren's work in the hospital as a college student, for whatever reason), but I didn't really know why they were included. I mean, I know why: because it was a formative part of Jahren's life that led her to where she is today. But somehow that doesn't seem like a quite satisfactory answer. Maybe I'll have more insight into this feeling if I read more memoirs. ...more

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Mar 20, 2017 Karan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Enjoyed the book. I imagine being her friend is draining!

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Oct 17, 2018 Jenn rated it liked it

Shelves: book-riot-2018, aty-2018

3.5
An interesting book. I enjoyed the parts about her work and the science a bit more than the personal details. Audiobook was a bad choice for me as it was painfully slow even at 1.5x speed at times.

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