This is a strongly written story about a woman who is determined to fight for satisfaction in her life. She’s happily married to her second husband. Despite the nay-sayers she fought to become a medical lab tech. It is the 1950 and she became pregnant at 16, the father of her child is one of the biggest obstacles in her quest for self-confidence and self-worth. It’s a no-hold barred account and includes a lot about her carnal desires. If you are put off by this, it’s not your book. If you want to root for a woman who is out to get what she wants, you’ll cheer for Lottie. ( )

A Netgalley ARC copy of the book (Published in the UK July 2020)

This is a timely novel centred on the life of a woman who wants to work in science. This is in the face of much of her family: Lottie's grandmother is highly supportive but her father and mother are not interested (in different ways): her mother has absented herself in books, her father is convinced shouting will solve his family problems. Her first husband takes persuading that she can work at all (like Olive Kitteridge, the novel jumps around between time periods, so her marital history is not a spoiler). The grind and poverty of doc and postdoc work is well captured. I admired the way the writer was unafraid to write in detail about the grim reality of scientific experimentation, from human anatomy to rats (but as a result, this is a book unlikely to appeal if you find these details hard to read). I come back to the Strout comparison - Lottie is not particularly likeable, but she feels like a real person, with real struggles.
"... name one female composer. It was harder than name one female scientist. It amazed Lottie how much it continued to amaze her that social strictures had crushed women throughout the centuries; some dark part of her assumed that women were inferior, that she was inferior, so her grandmother must have been inferior! And Evelyn! Evelyn inferior!
Consciously Lottie never felt inferior, but now and again she wanted to punch the nearest man." ( )