| Vendor | |
|---|---|
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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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CHEMISTRY
A literary debut novel about a young woman who, after leaving her chemistry PhD program, is forced to come to terms with doubts about commitments to her academic career, her would-be fiancee, and her demanding parents. Along the way she realizes with dry humor and moving introspection the value of her own self. Told by an unnammed narrator, set in Boston, this novel asks what every young person wants to know: what do I really want?
Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator of this nimbly wry, concise debut finds her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. She’s tormented by her failed research —and reminded of her delays by her peers, her advisor, and most of all by her Chinese parents, who have always expected nothing short of excellence from her throughout her life.
But there’s another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can’t make a life before finding success on her own.
Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind.
And for the first time, she’s confronted with a question she won’t find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry—one where the reactions can’t be quantified, measured, and analyzed. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.
Weike Wang started writing in college. Her first writing teacher was Amy Hempel. At the same time she finished the MFA, she finished her masters in biostatistics. Her dream, though, is to be a writer and not a biostatistician.
But there’s another, nonscientific question looming: the marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist, whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she can’t make a life before finding success on her own.
Eventually, the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and herself, behind.
And for the first time, she’s confronted with a question she won’t find the answer to in a textbook: What do I really want? Over the next two years, this winningly flawed, disarmingly insightful heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry—one where the reactions can’t be quantified, measured, and analyzed. Taking us deep inside her scattered, searching mind, here is a brilliant new literary voice that astutely juxtaposes the elegance of science, the anxieties of finding a place in the world, and the sacrifices made for love and family.
Weike Wang started writing in college. Her first writing teacher was Amy Hempel. At the same time she finished the MFA, she finished her masters in biostatistics. Her dream, though, is to be a writer and not a biostatistician.
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Book
Published 2017-05-01 by Knopf |
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Book
Published 2017-05-01 by Knopf |