The woman who narrates Weike Wang’s debut novel has stumbled into a quarter-life crisis. A Chinese-American chemistry Ph.D. student, she has always expected (as have her parents) that she would progress from triumph to academic triumph. A top student in high school, she was admitted to a prestigious university and excelled at chemistry.

Now, the time has arrived for her to complete her dissertation research and claim her graduate degree. But that isn’t happening.

She labors in the lab for hours, hovering over her experiments like an anxious mother, but the results don’t come. Without results, she can’t complete her research; but she can’t force the results to come. Though maybe she could spend a little more time in the lab, right? Holidays? Weekends? Nights? Would more investment of time help her to perfect her flawed hypotheses? Would a little patience allow her to come naturally to her “eureka” moment?

Her live-in boyfriend, redheaded wunderkind Eric, is a year ahead of her and already fielding job offers from his preferred academic institutions. The creative side of chemistry comes naturally to him. Maybe, he suggests to her, that life just isn’t for her. Maybe she topped out at speedily and proficiently replicating known reactions: She’s a technician. “Who does chemistry think he is, God?” she yells in response. “If I want it to be my thing, it will be my thing.”

It’s not the only question she’s avoiding. Eric has proposed to her. “Ask me again tomorrow,” she replies. “That’s not how it works,” he responds. For a while, though, that is how it works ― she goes to the lab, walks their dog, cuddles with him at night, and he waits for her to say yes. She and Eric met in graduate school, and when he eventually told her he loved her, she shut down: “I don’t know what to say. I don’t say anything he wants to hear.” She can only be vulnerable obliquely, by spending time with him, touching him, and, eventually, giving him a burrito with the right words written on the wrapper. Now, with marriage on the table, she is again balking at openly acknowledging the depth of their entanglement.

Nor can she acknowledge that, when it comes to her research, she’s hit an unyielding wall. Instead, one day, she calmly smashes a set of beakers on the floor. She takes a leave from the program. When her parents ask about her progress with her Ph.D., she lies.

In Chemistry, the beleaguered narrator finds herself replaying her relationship with her parents over and over ― with Eric, whose proffered love and commitment make her happy yet uneasy, and with the discipline of chemistry itself, which constantly withholds satisfaction and accolades in a way she finds familiar yet miserable. Her father, who overcame a poor rural background in China to become a successful engineer in America, expects nothing from her but success as a chemist; her mother was often miserable in the marriage, but finds common cause with her husband in relentlessly pushing their daughter to scientific stardom.

This narrator manifests a statistically significant problem. Like many young Asian-American women, she’s crushed beneath the weight of parental expectations. Recent studies have shown that Asian-American women have higher rates of suicidal ideation and attempts, depressed by, among other factors, the overwhelming pressure to succeed. It’s not that simple, though: Chemistry’s protagonist has suffered because of her parents, but also because of what her parents have suffered, her identification with the difficulties they have faced to make a life in America. When Eric insinuates that her mother should speak English with him, though he has been learning Chinese, she’s furious. Her mother might have hurt her, but she is protective, too, of the woman who has walked such an unwelcoming path. She’s caught in between, unable to fully identify with her mother, or with her loving, oblivious boyfriend.

Life, and even chemistry, have proven messier than the narrator allowed for as the book progresses. Her best friend, married and expecting a child, might seem to embody the right answer to her Eric dilemma, but that friend’s marriage and baby don’t provide a simple happy ending. Letting go of him doesn’t offer a simple, neat conclusion either. No matter how hard and determinedly she works, the chemistry Ph.D. may not be in the cards for her. There’s no straight line from hard work and potential to perfect success, which means she’s not equipped with the tools she needs for adulthood after all. Wang’s novel depicts a smart woman confronting an unplanned roadblock in her carefully engineered path, then feeling her way toward a terrifying unknown.

The tight first-person can feel somewhat claustrophobic and familiar ― a cerebral depressive slowly unraveling in front of herself ― and much like the protagonist’s Ph.D. project, Chemistry doesn’t astound with its originality of concept or virtuosic language. But the work has its quiet, unassuming power, as the narrator’s clinical approach and outsider eye infuses the story of her mental breakdown with both wry humor and pathos. 

The Bottom Line:

Weike Wang explores a young chemist’s reckoning with her own limits and possibilities in this capably crafted, thoughtful novel.

What other reviewers think:

Kirkus: “Though essentially unhinged, the narrator is thoughtful and funny, her scramble understandable. It is her voice—distinctive and appealing—that makes this novel at once moving and amusing, never predictable.”

Publishers Weekly: “A clipped, funny, painfully honest narrative voice lights up Wang’s debut novel about a Chinese-American graduate student who finds the scientific method inadequate for understanding her parents, her boyfriend, or herself.”

Who wrote it?

Chemistry is Weike Wang’s first novel. She has published short fiction in journals such as Redivider and Alaska Quarterly Review. Wang graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Harvard, where she also received a Ph.D. in public health. She holds an MFA from Boston University.

Who will read it?

Readers who enjoy deep first-person psychological portraits, and fictional examinations of mental health struggles and the travails of academia. 

Opening lines:

“The boy asks the girl a question. It is a question of marriage. Ask me again tomorrow, she says, and he says, That’s not how this works.

“Diamond is no longer the hardest mineral known to man. New Scientist reports that lonsdaleite is. Lonsdaleite is 58 percent harder than diamond and forms only when meteorites smash themselves into earth.”

Notable passage:

“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.

“I sketch out possible projects. Alchemy, for one. If I could achieve that today, I could graduate tomorrow.”

Chemistry
By Weike Wang
Knopf, $24.95
Publishes May 23, 2017  

The Bottom Line is a weekly review combining plot description and analysis with fun tidbits about the book.

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Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso’s 2014 autobiography #Girlboss was a huge success, so much so that “Pitch Perfect” writer Kay Cannon created a Netflix series “loosely” based on Amoruso’s story. But despite the book’s appeal, after the show’s April premiere, TV critics weren’t jazzed about the “unlikable” fictional Sophia (Britt Robertson), and wondered why the character wasn’t given more to work with. 

According to many outlets, including The New York Times and The Guardian, the on-screen Sophia “isn’t particularly interesting” and “a walking selfie, whining about having to work for a living.”

“’Girlboss’ aggressively wants you to like it,” Vulture’s Jen Chaney wrote. “Actually, to be more accurate, this Netflix series aggressively wants you to like its main character, precisely because she’s the kind of rebel who does not care if you like her.”

The show’s supporting star Ellie Reed ― who pretty much steals every scene she’s in as Sophia’s best friend, Annie ― doesn’t understand the criticism, considering it basically implies that a flawed woman can’t entertain as much as, say, a flawed man. 

“I was a little surprised when people reacted as harshly as they did just because, in my experience, there have been so many unlikable male characters on tons of TV shows,” Reed told HuffPost during a Build Series interview. “So, perhaps naively, I never thought it would be such a big deal to watch a woman ― a girl ― come up and make mistakes, and treat people like crap, and do all the things these male characters do ― these adult male characters. I just never thought it would be that big of a deal. I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, I know girls like this. Everybody does. Everybody’s behaved like that at some point.’”

Reed believes the reviews say a little bit more about the culture we live in rather than “Girlboss” itself. Can audiences not handle watching a woman who has “some issues,” as Reed explains it?

“If they can’t handle that then that’s pretty sad,” she asserted, “and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for girls who are trying to do something like Sophia ― trying to make their mark on the world and be really original. It doesn’t feel like they get any room to make mistakes, and I think that’s sad.” 

To see more of what Ellie Reed had to say about “Girlboss,” watch the full Build Series interview below. The show is now streaming on Netflix. 

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Pete Souza FTW. 

Just a day after President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump had a hand-holding incident that turned into the swat heard ‘round the world, the former White House photographer decided to remind everyone what a couple holding hands should actually look like.

So he shared a photo of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama. 

The image shows the Obamas holding hands during an event at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, marking the 50th Anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches. 

Souza previously explained what is was like to capture the tender and personal moment between the two. 

“I was moving around trying to capture different scenes away from the stage during the event to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches,” Souza said. “When I glanced back towards the stage, I noticed the president and first lady holding hands as they listened to the remarks of Rep. John Lewis. I managed to squeeze off a couple of frames before they began to applaud, and the moment was gone.”

Twitter was loving it. 

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Ben Platt, who you might remember as scene-stealing Benji in the “Pitch Perfect” movies, stopped by “The Late Show” on Monday to perform a song from his Tony-nominated musical “Dear Evan Hansen.” And like the utter Broadway professional that he is, he managed to pull a standing ovation out of the studio crowd.

In fact, following Platt’s faultless rendition of “For Forever,” host Stephen Colbert reemerged onstage with an appropriately stunned smile. Shaking his head, his disbelieving response represents only a fraction of the emotional fallout theater audiences have encountered after seeing Platt sing it live on Broadway.

“Dear Evan Hansen” is far away the favorite to nab the Tony for Best Musical this year, just as Platt is the frontrunner for a Best Actor statue. The show centers on the eponymous high school senior with social anxiety disorder who becomes mistakenly bound to a fellow student who committed suicide. The New York Times described it as “a nightly display of almost unbearable anguish.” 

Tickets to the musical are hard to come by, but we’ll all get a sneak preview of the “Hansen” cast on June 11, when the Tony Awards ceremony airs on CBS. In the meantime, check out “For Forever” above.

Check out the other plays and musicals nominated for Tonys here.

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President Donald Trump breezed through a visit to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem on Tuesday, summing up the half-hour experience in the museum’s guest book as “SO AMAZING.”

Although initial reports in Israeli and Jewish media suggested the president planned to spend just 15 minutes at the center, Trump’s team ended up setting aside 30 minutes for the visit, the AP reports. 

Before he left, Trump briefly signed the memorial’s guest book. True to form, Trump’s note was blunt and appeared a bit rushed.

 Times of Israel correspondent Raoul Wootliff tweeted out an image of the note. 

“It is a great honor to be here with all of my friends – So amazing and will NEVER FORGET!” the president wrote.

In response to the strangely curt note, an image of the message former President Barack Obama left in the guestbook started circulating on social media on Tuesday. Obama’s note, written while he was still a senator in 2008, demonstrated the striking differences in personality between Trump and his predecessor.

“Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim ‘never again,’” Obama wrote. “And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.”

Avner Shalev, the chairman of Yad Vashem, told ABC that he didn’t think Trump’s guestbook message was insensitive, especially because of the strong statements the president made during a speech at the center that remembered the victims as human beings and reminded people of the importance of speaking up in the face of evil.

Shalev told ABC that the remarks were “very meaningful” and that the president “touched all the essential elements that should be touched.”

Most foreign dignitaries who visit Israel make it a point to stop at Yad Vashem. Visits to the center, which preserves the memories of the six million Jewish people who were systematically murdered by Nazis during World War II, usually take about and hour and a half.

Obama spent about an hour touring the museum during another trip in 2013, visiting a children’s memorial, the Hall of Names, and the center’s Museum of Holocaust Art before spending several minutes writing in the museum’s guest book. President George Bush spent a longer amount of time at the museum during a visit in 2008. 

Trump didn’t tour the museum during his brief visit on Tuesday, citing his busy schedule during his first foreign trip as president. He did, however, attend a prayer ceremony inside Yad Vashem’s Hall of Remembrance, along with his wife, Melania Trump, and his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

The president lit the memorial’s eternal flame and laid a wreath, and spoke out against the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, calling it “the most savage crime against God and his children.”

“Millions of innocent and wonderful and beautiful lives, women and children, were extinguished as part of a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish people,” he said during a speech at Yad Vashem.

He also expressed firm support for Israel.

“The State of Israel is a strong and soaring monument to the solemn pledge we repeat and affirm: Never again,” he said. 

Before he left Yad Vashem, Trump was given a replica of a diary that belonged to Ester Goldstein, a German-Jewish teen who murdered during the Holocaust.

Trump has been criticized in the past over how his administration addressed the Holocaust.  In January, his team released a statement about Holocaust Remembrance Day that neglected to mention Jewish victims. And earlier this year, his press secretary Sean Spicer made the strange claim that Adolf Hitler never used chemical weapons, when in fact, the Nazis gassed millions of Jews in concentration camps.

Trump has tried to make amends since those incidents, forcefully speaking out against anti-Semitism during an annual Holocaust remembrance ceremony in late April.

Steven Goldstein, Executive Director, Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, told HuffPost in an email that the president’s 30 minutes at the center was “better” than the originally reported 15 minutes. “

“But it was nowhere close to the 90 minutes or more recommended length of a visit to Yad Vashem that would have allowed for a significant learning and reflection experience – the kind of deeper experience that would have countered the President’s odd signing of the guest book as ‘SO AMAZING.’ (Caps his.)”

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Roger Moore will forever be known as James Bond. But, in the wake of the actor’s death, we must memorialize one of his finest career hallmarks: “Spice World.”

British popular culture peaked in 1997 when the U.K.’s defining luminaries ― 007 and the Spice Girls ― collided. Moore played The Chief, the outlandish record executive who demanded the band work to the brink of exhaustion and delivered prattling monologues while stroking a cat, preparing a martini or feeding a bottle to his pet piglet. 

After playing Bond in seven films, Moore’s “Spice World” role put a spin on the franchise’s debonair villain tropes. He channeled Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the criminal eyeing world domination with the help of a placid white feline stationed on his lap. From his sterile office, The Chief hissed cryptic commands to the Spice Girls’ manager (Richard E. Grant) via telephone, instilling fear even as his words grew more and more nonsensical. 

“When the rabbit of chaos is pursued by the ferret of disorder through the fields of anarchy, it is time to hang your pants on the hook of darkness, whether they are clean or not,” Moore said in his ultimate “Spice World” riddle. 

Moore was 70 when he made “Spice World” ― it was one of his final movies, and a perfect cap on a life spent in the shoes of Britain’s most iconic hero. 

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A Virginia woman’s xenophobic rant against a Latino man was caught on camera. 

The video was shared by activist and New York Daily News writer Shaun King via Facebook on Monday. In the video, the unidentified woman is on the phone telling someone who is presumably a Sprint store representative that she is in Manassas, Virginia, which she describes as “the ghetto.” 

“You have probably five stores in Manassas, and none of them wanted to do anything,” she says to the person on the phone. “I’ve already been to two of them.” 

A Latino man who is in the store then interjects, saying, “They have one in Fairfax.”   

The woman immediately snaps back, “I wasn’t talking to you. And don’t listen to my conversation. Well, you better watch who the f**k you’re talking to ’cause I’m not the one.”

The man responds saying his name is “Juan,” possibly in jest because the name sounds like “one.”   

“I don’t give a f**k what your name is,” the woman responds, pointing to her husband and suggesting that he’d fight the man. Later, as she bites her nails, she adds that she’d fight him herself. 

The camera cuts away for a moment and the woman is then heard saying: “I ain’t scared of no f**king sp*c. This is my f**king country.”

After the man leaves the store, she says under her breath that he “needs to take his f**king ass back to Mexico.” 

Manassas is overwhelmingly white, with a demographic report by the city showing that 72 percent of the population identified as white and only 33 percent as Latino in 2015. 

The video had over 4.5 million views on King’s Facebook as of Tuesday. Last week, a similar viral video showed a man at a Reno, Nevada, airport calling a Puerto Rican man a “sp*c” and a “piece of sh*t” after overhearing him talking to his mother on the phone in Spanish. 

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The White House may have accidentally wrote “peach,” but this is bananas.

The Trump administration, which for some unknown reason appears to resist proofreading the things they write, made another embarrassing typo in a recent press release. 

As Stephen Colbert explained on Monday’s “Late Show,” one of the goals of President Donald Trump’s trip to Israel was described as promoting “the possibility of lasting peach.” 

“I think this one’s really going to resonate with the American people,” said Colbert. “Because Americans really want something with peach in it. Peach ice cream … peach cobbler … im-peach, anything with peach.”

Damn. Orange you glad you stuck around for the punch line?

In the White House’s defense, both lasting peace and lasting peach seem like solid ideas.

Colbert obviously agrees. 

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Worried about her daughter’s eating habits, one mom turned mealtime into a fun art display.

California mom Kim Anh Chang began creating food art in April for her 2-year-old daughter, Sam. Chang told HuffPost she was concerned about Sam’s “finicky appetite” so she set out to help spark her interest in food in a healthy and creative way. 

“I figured if I plate her dishes into something cute she will show more interest in eating it,” she said. “My goal is to create artful dishes to help my finicky eater share the same meals as the rest of the family. I want her to grow up getting use to eating what everyone else is eating and not have to make a separate meal just for her.”

Chang’s dishes include Lambie from “Doc McStuffins” made out of chicken and noodles and Rapunzel made out of noodles, ham and cheese. Chang told HuffPost she takes inspiration for her food art from Sam’s interests, which include teddy bears and Disney characters. The toddler also helps her mom come up with ideas. 

“The Lambie one was actually her idea,” she said. “I was Googling cute characters to see what I should make next. Sam was sitting next to me and showing a lot of interest. She then grabbed the Lambie toy from her playpen and gave it to me. I immediately knew what to do and prepared dinner shortly after.”

Sam also helps her mom out in the kitchen, just like Chang helped her family as a kid. 

“I grew up taking turns with my sister making dinner for the entire family (10 total) since I was 12 or 13,” she said.

Chang shares her tasty creations on Facebook and Instagram under the name Plate Art for Kids. She also shares tutorials for the dishes that feature Sam on YouTube.

Since starting her food art journey, Chang has noticed her daughter taking an interest in cooking with her.

“She absolutely loves it!” she told HuffPost. “Especially when I take out the pasta maker machine.”

The toddler’s eating habits have improved, and most importantly, the project has given the mom and daughter an opportunity to spend time together. 

“Having her help me cook and showing her to do these things herself gives her a sense of accomplishment and I noticed she’s wanting to eat more and more and looks forward to the time we can spend in the kitchen together,” Chang said.

See more food creations from Chang and Sam below and check out their Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for more dishes.

The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting. 

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Shopping at garage sales can be hit or miss, but one lucky customer is cashing in on a major find. 

Southeby’s will auction off a sparkly cocktail ring a woman bought at a car boot sale in 1980s England next month with a starting bid of £250,000 (roughly $325,000). She had thought for decades that it was costume jewelry and wore it without a care in the world, revealed the owner, who declined to be named publicly, the auction house said this week.

The woman had purchased the piece for £10 at a garage sale at West Middlesex University Hospital in Isleworth in west London, according to Sotheby’s. She decided in recent months to have the ring appraised after a jeweler said the stone could be real. 

Sotheby’s Jewelry in London confirmed the stone’s authenticity ― a 19th century 26.27-carat, cushion-shaped white diamond. The auction house added that the stone has a color grade of I and an impressive clarity grade of VVS2. The ring could go for as much as £350,000 (about $450,000).

“We confirmed that it was indeed a diamond. We got it tested with the Gemological Institute of America … and that then dictated the price,” said Sotheby’s Jessica Wyndham, who heads the auction house’s jewelry department.

In the interview in the video above, Wyndham added that it was understandable the owner did not know the ring held a real diamond. 

“It was in an antique style mount, so it was quite heavy,” she said. “It is mounted in silver around the top and when silver becomes tarnished it becomes quite black. And that mixed with the cut of the stone probably would have meant that it didn’t sparkle very much, and if it was all dirty, you just wouldn’t think that was real.”

The ring will hit auction on June 7.

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