Bonnie Garmus on her first novel Lessons In Chemistry

A bad day at the office was the trigger for Bonnie Garmus’ barnstorming début, which has sold in an impressive 35 territories worldwide and will be published in the UK by Doubleday, after Transworld won a fiercely contested 16-way auction. 

Speaking to me over the phone from Seattle, where she is visiting family—she now lives in London—Garmus, who is charming and full of fun, recalls coming home from work after a meeting where she was the only woman at the table, surrounded by men, and had encountered “what I’d refer to as garden variety misogyny”.

The chemistry was by far the trickiest part of writing the novel, she says now: “I could not consult Google—I had to learn from a 1950s chemistry book!

A copywriter specialising in tech, Garmus was about to carry on working at home but then: “I suddenly felt that this woman, Elizabeth Zott, was sitting with me at my table and I literally heard her say, ‘You think you’ve had a bad day? Listen to mine!’” And so Garmus started writing what is now the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry.

The novel opens in 1961 and introduces Elizabeth Zott, reluctant host (and star) of hit TV cooking show “Supper at Six”; single mother of a five-year-old daughter; and owner of the most delightful dog in fiction, Six-Thirty. She is also, we discover as the novel moves back in time, a brilliant chemist whose scientific career has been derailed by the sexism (and worse) of men who believe that a woman’s place is in the home. 

Lessons in Chemistry takes place in southern California, where Garmus grew up, although the town of Commons is fictitious, and the 1960s setting is close to the author’s heart: “I set it in that decade for a particular reason: that was my mother’s decade of being a stay-at-home mom and I realised, as I got older, exactly what these women had had to give up and how much work they had done [in the home] that went unacknowledged.” She could recall specific details about the era from her own childhood, which helped in re-creating that time period on the page. But also, Garmus says, “I wanted to salute that generation of overlooked housewives.”

In the novel, Zott’s TV cooking show has a powerful effect on her audience. She treats cooking as a chemistry, which of course it is, and gives her viewers instructions like “combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride.” She is not only teaching women to cook, she is encouraging them to take control of their lives. Zott is not beloved by everyone, though. “I have 10 points of view [in the novel] because everyone saw her in a different light—either [people were] infuriated with her or astonished by her or in love with her or hated her. I thought in order to round Elizabeth, we had to see her through multiple pairs of eyes.”

As well as writing a truly original book, Garmus is also notable for being a 64-year-old début author, a rarity in an industry that often seems obsessed with the voice of youth, rather than experience. “I feel great about having reached this goal now, at this age,” she says. Lessons in Chemistry is the third novel she has written, but the first to find a publisher. “It just proves that age doesn’t matter… I mean, I feel the same way I did at 30 but you do get one big gift: the ability to look at your characters with a little more empathy because you have been through some of their struggles.” 

Garmus always had ambitions to write and studied English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After graduation she worked as an editor for a scientific publisher, where she met the scientist who would later fact-check her novel. The chemistry was by far the trickiest part of writing the novel, she says now: “I could not consult Google—I had to learn from a 1950s chemistry book!”

After working at the publisher, Garmus had a brief foray into writing computer manuals before she discovered how much she hated it—and her boss pointed out her manuals had a “really sarcastic” tone, she recalls laughing. She moved on to become a copywriter specialising in technology and medicine, and set up her own business in Seattle rather than working in-house, because “if you work for an [advertising] agency you can’t ever turn down projects, and I never wanted to find myself writing about toilet paper”. 

As well as raising two children, now in their twenties, she was also trying to write creatively. Her first attempt at a novel was unfinished; her second was finished but far too long and so was rejected by agents “about 98 times”, she says wryly. She started Lessons in Chemistry in 2015 and was plugging away, when her husband’s job in technology unexpectedly brought them to London in 2017. Feeling rather lonely in a new city, as her husband was constantly travelling with work, she signed up to a creative writing course which is how she met her agent, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown, at a party. “I literally thought that she had mixed me up with someone else. Until she said my character’s name I thought I’d have to say, "‘Oh sorry Felicity, that’s someone else’s book!’”