Hope Jahren – Lab Girl (2016, Vintage Canada)
Geo/paleobiologist Hope Jahren’s memoir Lab Girl is a passionate, inspiring exploration of life – her life as a scientist, her life as a woman, the lives of the plants she studies. Alternately humorous, heartbreaking, reflective, and poetic, Lab Girl is beautifully written and illuminating. Jahren takes the reader through her cold Scandinavian upbringing in Minnesota and her refuge in studying science, to her struggle to obtain her own laboratory and gain acceptance from her colleagues. She chronicles her deep friendship with her unconventional lab partner, Bill, who accompanies her on all of her journeys (even when they end in car crashes or bold moves across the country); their witty, hilariously off-kilter banter is a perfect foil to the serious revelations of the book. Framed by lyrical passages about plants and the lessons they can teach us, Lab Girl is filled with wonder and insight.
Flowery Prose. 