Chemistry

The narrator (unnamed) tells a sad tale of her Chinese parents' obsession with education and achievement for her, their only child, and her inability to complete a Ph.D. in chemistry that leads her to push away an ideal suitor and to scramble to discover what she really wants in life. The narrator turns to chemistry, to science, to the complexities of the Chinese language, to try to understand her difficult relationships with her parents and with her boyfriend. Chemistry is a brilliant, wandering, serendipitous collection of random reflections on the nature of the universe side-by-side with introspections about the nature of the heart.