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Elke Heidenreich, author and book critic
I'll read you something, the beginning of the book that I'm presenting to you today:
'November 1961. Back in '61, when women wore shirt-and-blouse-dresses and joined garden clubs and countless children drove around in cars without seatbelts.
Back before anyone even knew there would be a '68 movement.
And certainly not one that its participants would talk about for the next 60 years.
Back when the great wars were over and the secret wars had just begun and people gradually started to think in new ways and to believe that everything was possible.
Madelaine Zott's thirty-year-old mother got up before dawn every morning and was sure of only one thing: her life was over.
The opposite is the case.
This might be a grenade novel, I'm telling you!
Bonnie Garmus, a Californian, wrote a book, A Question in Chemistry, and I have not read a book as entertaining, funny, and intelligent as this in a long time.
It's about Elizabeth Zott.
And it's so natural and portrayed so well, a scientist, a chemist, that I kept googling it, it really has to exist.
And I even called the publisher and said "That's fake, doesn't it exist?".
"No," they said, "it's really made up, it doesn't exist."
And this Elizabeth Zott, you fall totally in love with her.
This is a scientist, the book then goes back ten years in the fifties, a chemist who works at an institute in Hastings and is just bullied and humiliated by the men.
Because how are women supposed to be scientists?
How is that supposed to be possible?
How it is.
You have to listen to a lot of stupid sayings.
And then she meets someone who's a bit of an outsider like her, a tall, lanky, actually unfriendly person.
His name is Calvin Evans and the two immediately fall in love.
That means »a question of chemistry«, the chemistry between them is right and they do research together.
He immediately recognizes the intellectual potential of this woman.
They understand each other blindly, they move in together, they love each other.
He wants so badly to marry her.
But she doesn't want all this nonsense about marriage and marriage.
she wants to work
And I won't tell you why there isn't a happy ending, because I want you to have fun reading it yourself.
But there is no happy ending and she is pregnant by him, with a little girl who she then has, who she is raising alone and with great difficulty because she has since been kicked out in Hastings.
It has been said that they are only attached to the.
Her results have been used and the men have published her as their own and she's really... she's fucked up.
But there is no happy ending and she is pregnant by him, with a little girl who she then has, who she is raising alone and with great difficulty because she has since been kicked out in Hastings.
It has been said that they are only attached to the.
Her results have been used and the men have published her as their own and she's really... she's fucked up.
But there is no happy ending and she is pregnant by him, with a little girl who she then has, who she is raising alone and with great difficulty because she has since been kicked out in Hastings.
It has been said that they are only attached to the.
Her results have been used and the men have published her as their own and she's really... she's fucked up.
And now, by chance, she meets someone who is an editor for television and they produce a cooking show in the 1960s.
And he sees her as a tough, independent woman and says: »She can moderate this cooking show, we're looking for someone like that«.
And she does it because she needs money.
And now Elizabeth Zott is a chemist.
And she doesn't say: "Now we'll put the potatoes in salted water and boil them," but she says, "We'll take the tuber, put it in H2O and also put a bit of sodium chloride on it." And the producer rages and says: " My god, can't she dress a little sexy?
Can't she say salt instead of sodium chloride?” But she can't, she's doing her thing.
And she takes a tomato and says, "This tomato has a lot in common with you,
because it's 60 percent the same, the same DNA as humans, namely water.« And then she shows a picture of Rosa Parks, that was the black woman who got on a bus and didn't get up for a white man, a civil rights activist.
And she says: "You have a 99 percent DNA match with Rosa Parks, I just wanted to put it this way." And he fumes and says: "Politics don't belong on a cooking show." For Elizabeth Zott, however, it does.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
And then she shows a picture of Rosa Parks, that was the black woman who got on a bus and didn't stand up for a white man, a civil rights activist.
And she says: "You have a 99 percent DNA match with Rosa Parks, I just wanted to put it this way." And he fumes and says: "Politics don't belong on a cooking show." For Elizabeth Zott, however, it does.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
And then she shows a picture of Rosa Parks, that was the black woman who got on a bus and didn't stand up for a white man, a civil rights activist.
And she says: "You have a 99 percent DNA match with Rosa Parks, I just wanted to put it this way." And he fumes and says: "Politics don't belong on a cooking show." For Elizabeth Zott, however, it does.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
who got on a bus and didn't stand up for a white man, a civil rights activist.
And she says: "You have a 99 percent DNA match with Rosa Parks, I just wanted to put it this way." And he fumes and says: "Politics don't belong on a cooking show." For Elizabeth Zott, however, it does.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
who got on a bus and didn't stand up for a white man, a civil rights activist.
And she says: "You have a 99 percent DNA match with Rosa Parks, I just wanted to put it this way." And he fumes and says: "Politics don't belong in a cooking show." For Elizabeth Zott, however, it does.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
« But it is for Elizabeth Zott.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
« But it is for Elizabeth Zott.
And she says at the end of every show: »So children, your mother has now cooked, now she needs a few minutes to herself.
Now set the table."
And slowly, across the country, women are beginning to think differently, to have more confidence in themselves, because in every show they motivate people to have more confidence.
And the producer rages and fires her.
And how it goes on, I don't want to tell you everything.
I just want to say that I've rarely read such an entertaining, intelligent book about how women have to assert themselves in a man's world.
Especially when it's a scientific world what the crap they have to listen to that they can't do it all.
But our Elizabeth can do it and it's going well.
And unfortunately the last ten pages are a bit Rosamunde Pilcher, but ten out of 460 isn't too bad.
It's a great story, witty, clever book that unravels a little too well at the end.
But we want to forgive her for that.
And the book reminded me of another book about 20 years ago, Per Olof Enquist »The Book of Blanche and Marie.« This is also a book about two female scientists, especially about one, namely Marie Curie, who after the death of her husband Pierre collaborated with Blanche Wittman.
This was the most famous hysteric of her time.
At the end of the 19th century, Professor Charco, Sigmund Freud's teacher, showed her in Paris at the Salpêtrière and explained her hysteria.
Very questionable experiments.
And she became Marie Curie's assistant.
All of this is not really documented.
There is a lot of fiction at Enquist.
Some is true, some is not.
Both women did not know how dangerous X-rays are, which Curie was researching.
So also exciting to read, both books about women in science.
But this one is particularly beautiful.
And I still have to tell you an anecdote from "A Question of Chemistry".
Her editor loves her very much because he sees that the show is popular across the country.
But her producer hates her and lets her come into his office and says, 'Dress her a little sexier.
High heels, please, and finally say salt instead of sodium chloride.« And she said: »I'm not even thinking about it, that's my show«.
And he says: "I'll produce them and then I'll release them."
If she says: »Yes, then just let me go.« He then locks his office, stands in front of her, undoes his pants, pulls out his puny little cock and says: »I should have done that a long time ago.
And she opens her purse and pulls out her 14 inch carving knife, she always has her own knives for cooking, just shows it to him and he faints and the resignation is done.
So something like that is of course wonderful to read.
So, that's what I've told you now.
And now let
's see what the Spiegel bestseller list
is doing this week:
Is this saying goodbye to the bestseller list?
Edgar Selge and his auto-fictional novel »Have you finally found us« tell the story of the actor's childhood and what it was like to grow up as the son of a prison warden.
Eighth place last week, tenth place this week.
Also in ninth place was an old acquaintance: Bernhard Schlink with his novel »The Granddaughter«.
The story about family secrets, which leads the main character Kaspar into the right-wing milieu in East Germany, has been in the top ten for 25 weeks.
Brenner fans had to wait eight years for this sequel: the life-scarred detective, who is played by the Austrian superstar Josef Hader in the film versions of this series, now works at a recycling center and finds a human knee in the garbage.
The police are clueless.
But ex-policeman Brenner takes care of the matter.
"Müll" by Wolf Haas - this week on the eight.
Stable on the seven, as in the previous week, Laetitia Colombani with her story about brave, strong women in "The Girl with the Dragon."
It's hard to imagine this list without Carsten Henn and his »Buchspazier« again this week delivering books to their readers at night.
And that's Carsten Henn's new book, »The Story Baker«: Dancer Sophie is suffering from the end of her professional career.
She actually wanted to quit her part-time job in the bakery immediately.
But her new colleague, the Italian baker Giacomo, and his skills fascinate Sophie so much that she begins to learn more about baking bread.
A book about accepting yourself as you are and the happiness of the little things - entered number four last week, number five this week.
In fourth place this week is Jan Weiler's father-daughter story »Der Markisenmann.« Fifteen-year-old Kim is spending the summer holidays with her father, whom she has never seen before.
Both the life of the unsuccessful awning salesman and that of the teenager change abruptly when they meet.
A moment ago it was still on Elke Heidenreich's desk and now it's right at the top of the bestseller list: "A Question of Chemistry" by Bonnie Garmus is a story about the changing state of matter, namely that of American society in the 1950s as well as that of food in a saucepan.
In the novel, single mother Elizabeth dreams of becoming a chemist, but soon finds herself working as the cook on the TV show Dinner at Six.
But cooking remains pure chemistry for Elizabeth.
Stable on the number two, also this week: The American crime writer Elizabeth George, who mostly sets her stories in English cities and her latest novel »What is hidden in hiding«.
In it, Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the Nigerian community of north London and encounters murder, human rights abuses and a wall of silence.
And he has done it again: bestseller list king Sebastian Fitzek is the new and old number one.
This time Fitzek got help from TV and radio presenter Micky Beisenherz.
The author duo tells him »write or die« the story of the literary agent David Dolla, who is supposed to arrange a multi-million dollar publishing deal for a psychiatric inmate.
If the deal goes through, Dolla could possibly save a life.
But is the patient in psychiatry telling the truth?
A moral dilemma for Dolla, which obviously goes down well with crime thriller fans.
