Lab Girl

Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.

Lab Girl is the memoir of acclaimed paleobiologist and tenured professor Hope Jahren (she has not only been given the opportunity to build three research laboratories at universities across the US, but she has also received three Fulbright Awards amongst other honours), and in it she shares: the biographical information that led her from a Minnesota childhood to her current home in Hawaii; the particular challenges of being a woman scientist; her remarkable relationship with long-time lab partner Bill Hagopian; her struggles with bipolar disorder; and a contagious passion for plant-life. I must admit that this book started shakily for me, but by the end, I was totally enthralled by Jahren's story, enjoyed her writing style, and if I'm left with a complaint, it's that I wanted more. And that's not a bad thing: here's hoping Jahren writes another.

Let me explain about the shaky start: In the opening sequence about Jahren's childhood, we learn that her father taught math and sciences at the local community college (where he allowed the young Hope free reign of his lab and encouraged her curiosity; despite her being just a girl) and that her mother was frigid and demanding, and although she had been thwarted by poverty from pursuing her own post-secondary dreams, Mama Jahren eventually studied English Literature by correspondence; a study she roped young Hope into helping with. When Hope first left for college, she intended to study English Lit herself until she fell under the spell of the school's science lab. Pretty much right away, the reader can see these competing influences: Jahren will share a brief (yet admittedly fascinating) fact about a species of tree or other plant, and after making a heavy-handed allusion to that for which this fact is a metaphor, she then includes a chapter that illustrates the metaphor. For instance, she wrote about the relationship between the tree roots in a forest and the “web of stringy hyphae” that mushrooms entwine with those roots. This relationship seems more beneficial to the trees than to the mushrooms and scientists can't yet explain why the mushrooms “choose” to grow where they do. This section ends by Jahren musing, “perhaps the fungus can somehow sense that when it is part of a symbiosis, it is also not alone”. Then the following chapter tells a story about a field trip Jahren took with lab partner Bill and some students; in which she demonstrates the benefits of camaraderie. This format goes back and forth, and while I do appreciate the idea of such a framework, it came off as heavy handed. 

Even worse: Very near the beginning, Jahren describes her time working in the university's hospital pharmacy lab, and after noting that she was writing a term paper at the time about the recurrence of the word “heart” in David Copperfield, she repeatedly, heavy-handedly, ad nauseumly quoted lines (the shells and pebbles on the beach...made a calm in my heart) that more or less corresponded to particular incidents. I confess I hated this chapter and I feared that the entire book would feel forced and amateurish. And I'm only being specifically and hard-heartedly critical of this section because I am so glad that I kept reading: if, like me, you get to this part and hate it, I can assure you that Jahren eventually drops the gimmick, and even though she does continue with the interesting-fact-as-metaphor-followed-by-chapter-that-illustrates-the-fact, they are all so interesting that, like I said earlier, my only complaint at the end is that this book ended too soon.

Since I shared what I thought was poor writing, I should balance that with what I found to be wonderful. This is Jahren after catching herself being ridiculously pleased by her doctor's encouragement:

I am sick to death of this wound that will not close; of how my babyish heart mistakes any simple kindness from a woman for a breadcrumb trail leading to the soft love of a mother or the fond approval of a grandmother. I am tired of carrying this dull orphan-pain, for though it has lost its power to surprise, every season it still reaps its harvest of hurt. This woman is my doctor; she is not my mother, I tell myself firmly, and I am humiliated in my need, even to myself.

And this is Jahren on the moment of giving birth:

I hear my own voice shrieking out its bewilderment at finding so many imperfections within a world of limitless possibilities. When my vision clears, I realize that what I have actually heard is the long-known and already-recognized cry of my new baby.

I loved those bits (my breath hitched at both) and many other scenes (Bill living in a van; hoarding his hair; dancing under a midnight sun; okay, I loved everything about Bill). I appreciate that Jahren was trying to share the daily grind of monotonous experiments, the scrabbling for funding, and the balance of research time with teaching that comes with her position, but here's a last complaint: I wouldn't have known about her awards and honours if they weren't on the book's cover; she spends zero of the ink inside the book on her noted accomplishments. Also, while she alludes a couple of times to the sexism she has had to endure (especially when she was young and unpublished), I would have liked to have read of some of the specifics of the battles she's been through. I was pleased to discover that there is much more to be found on these areas in Jahren's blog: hopejahrensurecanwrite.com. Unlike with other blog-to-memoir books that I have read, there's no overlap between these two and each makes a nice companion to the other.

I have been admonished for being too feminine and I have been distrusted for being too masculine. I have been warned that I am far too sensitive and I have been accused of being heartlessly callous. But I was told all of these things by people who can't understand the present or see the future any better than I can. Such recurrent pronouncements have forced me to accept that because I am a female scientist, nobody knows what the hell I am, and it has given me the delicious freedom to make it up as I go along.

Ultimately, I really did like this book and was happy to have gotten to know something of this fascinating woman and her work. If she does come out with another volume, I'd read it happily. Those early gimmicky bits drag down my rating, but I'm giving this four stars; consider it a rounding up.