Lab Girl

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren   289 pages

A rare and emotionally engaging close-up look at the development and practice of science, its empowerment and challenges, and the ability of Hope Jahren to transform influences from her father and her questing personality into a successful career in paleoecology. From her time helping her father manage the physics lab, she came to appreciate the outlook of scientific inquiry, feel empowered in a laboratory full of equipment she could master, and get rewarded from problem solving. I actually wanted more about the science and her contributions, but that would impede the more substantial success this memoir has as a portrait of a partnership with Bill, a graduate student who became a lab manager, technician, and essential collaborator in all her research.

I so loved the snap of the quirky dialog she reconstructed from their day to day lives in the lab or on the road at exotic study sites. The humor is fresh, often slapstick, sarcastic or ironic, but it makes an effective channel for them both that combines unconditional support and brutal honesty. The scenarios with Bill that she spins out like acts on a stage careen from low points of self-deprecation and absurdist dissipation of their failures to driven efforts to reach a goal with many all-night stints in the lab or busting ass and threatening their health in the field. And sometimes they get epiphanies over results and rewarding dreams of glory over their discoveries and, more practically, some payback in near-term job security. I also loved the adventures she and Bill have in building labs at different academic postings she climbs and in their entertaining trips to scavenge equipment and in student instruction through field trips. The latter trips with students in soil science involve almost unbelievable tales of camping, excavations, and sampling work, disasters with vehicles, and R&R trips to odd tourist spots like Reptile World.

Interspersed with the narrative history, Jahren inserts lyrical reveries and essays on how the lives and wonders of plants inform her understanding of herself and the planet. Many of these mental excursions make for metaphors of lessons for her own life. It is a tribute to her writing or teaching style that these stealth botany lessons are so entertaining that we are educated unawares.

My only concern about the book is that Jahren details all the negative aspects of her personal and professional journeys. Although she deserves kudos for baring all, it is only in reading the book jacket that we learn that she is a celebrated and highly awarded scientist. None of these accolades are alluded to in her narrative, which  I think does a disservice to her mentorship of future (especially female) scientists. 

Posted by: Regina C.