Everyone is afraid of Elizabeth Zott. Someone is her mind, someone is the sharpened pencil she wears in her hair, and someone is the fourteen-inch knife from her purse (after all, every self—respecting cook uses only his own knives). A bizarre zigzag of fate led her from the Hastings Research Institute, where she dreamed of studying abiogenesis (the theory of the origin of life from inorganic substances), to television, where she hosts the country's most popular culinary program "Dinner at Six." "Cooking is chemistry," she says. — And chemistry is life. She gives us the opportunity to change everything, including ourselves." Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter Madeleine, who is growing up under the supervision of a mine-hunting dog named Six-Thirty, is trying to find Nabokov and Norman Mailer in the school library, as well as build a family tree on which there should be a place for the Nobel Chemistry laureate Calvin Evans, the fairy godmother, and the grandfather in a striped prison robe, and a grandmother who hid from the tax police in Brazil...In the fall of 2023, the Apple TV+ channel released a film adaptation of the novel. The main role was played by Brie Larson ("Captain Marvel"), she also acted as a producer. The series received ten Emmy Award nominations (and won in one category) and two Golden Globe nominations.