“Lessons in Chemistry” (post 4) by Bonnie Garmus: Is the dog, named Six-Thirty, merely a dog, at the end?

Elizabeth finally meets the long-lost mother of the man she had loved, a woman who is also the grandmother of her beloved daughter. That woman and her lawyer leave the room, and…

“As the door closed behind them, Elizabeth bent down and took Six-Thirty’s head in her hands. “Tell me. How soon did you know?” [that it was actually the long-lost mother of the only man I ever loved].

At two forty-one, he wanted to say. Which is what I plan to call her.

But instead he turned and jumped up on the opposite counter and grabbed a fresh notebook. Removing the pencil from her hair, she took it from him, then opened to the first page.

“Abiogenesis,” she said. “Let’s get started” (1, p. 386).

Comments: Elizabeth’s dog, whose person-like thoughts are evidently heard as voices in Elizabeth’s head, names himself and the long-lost mother according to the hour they first become known. And though, earlier in the novel, readers may regard the dog as amusing, his role on the last page is alter ego or alternate personality, suggesting multiple personality trait of the author.

1. Bonnie Garmus. Lessons in Chemistry. New York, Doubleday, 2022.