Lab Girl by Hope Jahren Review by Andrea Vollmer

Lab Girl is the memoir of a quirky female scientist and her love of plants. Hope Jahren lays it all out there: her unorthodox lifestyle as a female scientist, dealing with mental illness, an intense and unusual friendship with a colleague, the politics of funding research, and her obsessive interest with the plant world in its every incarnation.

Half of the fourteen chapters tell the stories of plants—their form, function, how they grow and survive adversity, and their special features. These chapters are full of fascinating facts, and I felt like I was being let in on the secrets of nature through the eyes of an expert. Jahren’s writing style is easy, entertaining, and surprisingly informative as she explains the intricacies of plants and science in straightforward terms. These chapters also cleverly serve as springboards into the seven alternating chapters of her life and work. Jahren makes exquisite connections between the arcs of plants and people as if they were one genus.

Readers will love this book if they are interested in themes of female leaders in traditionally male occupations, plant science (or science in general), or finding a place to feel you belong. It made me ask many questions: Why did I turn away from the sciences early in life (even though I’m fascinated by nature)? Why are scientists (or anyone else) pressured to look or act a certain way to be accepted in their field? What revolutionary scientific findings and/or advances could be discovered if the ways we fund research were different? How would people’s views on the environment change if they knew how plants interacted with their environment and humans?

Lab Girl is a wonderfully interesting slice of life story that made me immediately want to learn more about this fascinating author, her life and work, and plant science.