Lab Girl

A Story of Trees, Science and Love

by Hope Jahren

No cover — Hope Jahren: Lab Girl (2016, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)

English language

Published Nov. 11, 2016 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

ISBN:: 978-0-349-00619-2

(7 reviews)

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world

Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.

Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, …

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world

Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.

Jahren’s probing look at plants, her astonishing tenacity of spirit, and her acute insights on nature enliven every page of this extraordinary book. Lab Girl opens your eyes to the beautiful, sophisticated mechanisms within every leaf, blade of grass, and flower petal. Here is an eloquent demonstration of what can happen when you find the stamina, passion, and sense of sacrifice needed to make a life out of what you truly love, as you discover along the way the person you were meant to be.

10 editions

Tsundoku reviewed Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Unexpected representation in the ECT field

5 stars

Content warning Mental Health issues, sexism, post-partum issues (Ableism in reviewer's life also mentioned)

Though I don't mention it much on this site (because it doesn't really come up) I get ECTs fairly frequently, and they affect how I read (as ECTs affect memory, basically I try to either reach a good pause point or finish a piece of media a few days before one)

but at first I was charmed. In a chapter where she mentions having to fill medications in a hospital (A stressful environment) she mentioned having to do it for the ECT clinic as well (basically the special anesthesia ) and she was so tremendously not a jerk about it--she got it. And that part ALONE meant so much to me, because as part of my university accommodations I had to discuss WHY I was gone so much. And you could see it change each professor's view (at best, there's some stories that piss me off I'm not sharing) as I became "the Crazy one".

but also Jahren gets pregnant--you may not know this, but there are SO many medications you aren't allowed to take once you know you're pregnant. And so she was dealing with manic depressive episodes without any mood stabilizers. and since she got worse while pregnant, she had to undergo an ECT treatment, which, like my initial "season" left her with virtually no memories of that time.

I don't think the ECTs were the point of the book (I think the point was the beautiful observations about plants), but having this representation meant so much to me

M@ reviewed Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Review of 'Lab Girl' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Maybe all scientists should start their academic careers as literature majors. Inculcating a love of the written word at such an important stage in their intellectual development will lead to better technical papers, better public communication, better science advocacy. Most importantly to me, maybe it will lead to more science memoirs like this one.

This is, at its core, a science memoir. We have a girl falling in love with science, a young woman having that love reciprocated by science in college, and an adult living in a fulfilling and equal relationship with science. But, possibly because of that competing love of the written word, the memoir is broken up into illustrative anecdotes and is really tightly written in a really distinctive voice.

These anecdotes are broken up by chapters in which no person appears, and the good doctor points her professional knowledge right at us and lets us have it with both barrels. Chapters on plant embryos, trees, cacti, moss and weeds, still written in that great voice, break up the flow, and even somewhat set the theme for the personal chapters to come. I read these chapters with a big grin and periodic exclamations of "neat!" and I'll be honest, I'd have given this book five stars if it were just these science chapters.

Not sold yet? One of the unifying elements is Dr. Jahren's friendship with lab partner, accomplice, and best friend Bill, last name unsaid (but not unfindable thanks to the Internet), who becomes her friend in graduate school and works with her to this day. This book is just as much about their friendship as it is about the author herself (or, I guess, plants), and I am a gigantic sucker for a great work about friendship.

There it is; 300 pages of great memoir, with solid quotes like "[m]y laboratory is like a church because it is where I figure out what I believe." Interspersed with keen and interesting science, like her noting that "[a] cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn’t killed it yet.", or telling us about Anomalocaris, "—a segmented marine insect the size of a Labrador retriever—". And finally, a great story of a great friendship, with one-line bon mots:

“What is your problem, anyway?” Bill said in exasperation. “You’re acting like a guy shaving off his hair and then hoarding it in a dead tree on the wrong side of town isn’t a totally normal thing.

In the chapter where Bill encourages her to write the book, she confesses that she loves to write, and says "[N]othing feels better to me than finding exactly the right word that stabs cleanly at the heart of what you are trying to say." You and me both, Dr. Jahren, and every chapter in this book's full of these exactly-right words, often in exactly the right order and about the right topic.

Beholderess reviewed Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Review of 'Lab Girl' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

What I loved:

Some fascinating facts about plants, about scientific process - the physical process of creating science with your own hands.

A beautiful story of friendship between a woman and a man - literature needs more examples of non-romantic close friendship. The faithful sidekick Bill is the best

Lyrical language. It is precise and direct, yet flows like water

What I didn't like:

Too much family life/feelings/childhood memories

Narration of the audiobook - this book is better read than listened to, as the author makes it sound heartbreakingly sad all the time, even though it is not a sad book at all