Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

From the publisher: Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Lab Girl is Hope Jahren’s memoir and first book, and though it is about her life in science, you can tell that she also has a background in English. Her writing is beautiful and easy to follow, even when describing intricate scientific experiments. Indeed, she did start off as an English major in college before turning to science, but Lab Girl makes it clear that science is her true love. Even those who are not big into science will come out with a newfound interest in the subject due to Jahren’s affectionate descriptions of her work and trees in general. She manages to teach the reader a lot about what she does without making it seem like you’re reading a textbook. 

Jahren is a geobiologist, and studies trees and plants. Lab Girl follows her as she goes to college in Minnesota, gets her PhD at the University of California Berkeley, meets her best friend and lab partner, Bill, and builds several labs all over the world. Despite her love of science, her early years were lonely ones, and her story makes for an enlightening but often sad read. She discusses her mental health struggles, giving vivid descriptions of manic depressive episodes stemming from her Bipolar Disorder. She also talks frankly about the sexism she endures in her field. In telling about her first scientific breakthrough, she says “On some deep level, the realization that I could do good science was accompanied by the knowledge that I had formally and terminally missed my chance to become like any of the women that I had ever known”. She works with very few other women, and is often looked down upon and endures condescension and gossip about her looks and intelligence from the men she works with, except for Bill. Jahren meets Bill at Berkeley, and the two bond quickly over being outcasts in their field. Jahren hires Bill to work in her lab at Berkeley, and they have worked together ever since. Hope and Bill’s friendship is my favorite part of the book. They are there for each other every step of the way, at any time of day, and to help with any problem, work related or personal. 

I am not a big “science person”, so I was worried that this book would be boring or go right over my head. That was not the case. The book has interchapters, before each chapter about her own life, Jahren includes a short chapter about the growth or history of trees. These interchapters tie in to her story and she draws parallels between her life and the life cycle of trees. While some of these shorter tree chapters did drag a bit for me, they were mostly interesting and a creative way to tell her story while also showing how important and alive plants are. Overall, Lab Girl is a beautifully written story of an interesting and adventurous life. I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in environmental activism or women in science.

Jahren is passionate about environmental conservation and keeping our planet green and healthy. She ends the book with a plea to the reader to plant a tree, so I will end this review in the same way. If you are able, plant a tree this spring. Tree seedlings are fairly cheap, and it’s a great outdoor activity if you’re stuck at home during quarantine. Jahren continues her fight against climate change in her new book that came out in March, The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here. The Galesburg Public Library owns a copy, so if you enjoy Lab Girl, be sure to check it out. If you’re looking for more books on this subject, check out The Overstory by Richard Powers, also available as a print book and an ebook. 

The Galesburg Public Library owns Lab Girl as a print copy, an ebook, and an audiobook.