Cooking up a storm with Bonnie Garmus

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus is one of this year’s hottest new books. A feminist fable set in the white-picket-fence world of pre-Vietnam America, it centres on a ‘fallen woman’ who surreptitiously educates the nation’s housewives in matters of science and freedom while all the while appearing to do nothing more than teach them how to whip up a top-dollar dinner for their hardworking husbands.

Since its publication in April, readers have seized on its sassy and intelligent storyline, sending it to the top of both the Sunday Times and the New York Times bestseller lists. It has also become an instant hit with the book club brigade.

However, for 65-year-old debut novelist Bonnie Garmus, who is appearing at Readers Day at this year’s Guildford Book Festival, the ‘overnight’ success belies a journey to accepted author status that has been a long and sometimes painful one.

“Having this kind of reaction has been a real shock to my system,” she reveals. “It’s a surprise every day. I had written a novel previously but I could not get anyone to read that. In fact, it got rejected 98 times - mostly on length as it was about 700 pages. Coming from a debut author that apparently was something people didn’t seem to want.

“Finally someone read a small portion of it and replied. Although she said she liked it, she was very scolding in her email about people who decide they should write something that long without any kind of following. She suggested that I write something of ‘appropriate length’. It was good advice, if a little harsh in its delivery.”

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Lessons in Chemistry

Lessons in Chemistry has emerged just as nostalgic Americana is everywhere - think Olivia Wilde’s 50s thriller Don’t Worry Darling, Ana de Armas' turn as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde not to mention Baz Lurhman’s bedazzling biopic of the king of rock ‘n’ roll Elvis. But as those films have also shown, the American Dream may not have been all it seemed.

“I was a child doing that time. It was my mother’s era and I wanted to write something that showed what life was like then. I wanted to write about the restrictions and restraints my mother had lived under. It was really shocking. I had not realised just how much she wasn’t allowed to do. So many things were frowned upon.

“It was sold as a time in American history when women got to stay at home - they had all these appliances to help out, and all this leisure time. But I can tell you, my mother worked from sun up to sun down. She worked so hard she did not have a fingerprint. It was not this halcyon period at all for most women.”

Bonnie’s story centres on Elizabeth Zott, a promising young scientist forced to abandon her career after an affair with a colleague. So far it is a tale we have heard before. But what Elizabeth does next is what sets her apart, and her actions have seen her quickly adopted as a heroine of not only her time but our time too.

“I started off wanting to show how much things had changed for women. But as I wrote I realised that things had not changed as much as I’d hoped for. Now in the US with Roe vs Wade being overturned, it’s clear that we just keep sliding back. It is a real concern to me - I have two daughters

and I can’t bear to think that this generation has to fight the same fights again.

“I have heard from thousands of women all over the world who are currently working in labs and have said their experience now is just like Elizabeth’s. That’s really depressing to hear as she was working in the 60s. But on the other hand, they are there and they are there in greater numbers so that is a good thing.”

Born in 1957, Bonnie has enjoyed a successful career as a copywriter and creative director, before turning her hand to fiction. Raised in California she left the US to live first in Geneva and then in London as her husband’s job moved from city to city.

In fact it was her arrival in London and the need to get out and make friends that led her to joining a creative writing group. From there she found the confidence to try her hand once more at getting published.

This time, she landed an agent - and not just any agent but Felicity Blunt of Curtis Brown no less, sister of Hollywood star Emily Blunt and wife of actor Stanley Tucci, and more importantly, one of the best in the business.

But while this was further than Bonnie had got before, Ms Blunt made it clear that getting publishers to sign on the dotted line was by no means a done deal.

“I thought I would never get an agent, and so when I did I was delirious,” she laughs. “And of course, the agent I got was the dream agent - I had to keep checking things were really happening the way they seemed to be going.

The night before Felicity took the novel to Frankfurt [where book deals are done] she called me and said, ‘You know we like the book but we don’t know if anyone else is going to find anything in it. So let’s just see’.”

They needn’t have worried.

“Felicity called again 24 hours later and said, ‘Okay, scratch that it is a war out there’.”

The book was the subject of a 16-way tussle between publishers, which was eventually won by Doubleday. It has also been sold into 35 countries and production has already begun on a screen adaptation - starring Oscar-winner Brie Larson - which is scheduled to air on Apple TV+ in autumn 2023.

“I thought most books come out and sit on the shelf for a few years and then someone may pick it up for TV. But this was optioned before the book had a publisher in the US. Things have happened so very, very quickly. The whole thing has been a complete shock to me. I never thought there would be this level of interest.”

When she is not writing Bonnie enjoys open-water swimming, it is something she has done since childhood. Although she points out: “I am from Southern California, where you only swim outdoors, so we just call it swimming.”

She tells me: “My father was a big swimmer and from the age of around five, I would go with him. For me there is a certain freedom you get from swimming out in the wild. I run into a few things I wish I didn’t while I am out there, but you can just swim and it’s wonderful. I prefer the colder water, which living here is lucky.”

Bonnie says one of the best parts of being an author is sharing her experiences with others and meeting readers who have enjoyed her novel.

“I had been a professional writer for 30 years and I approached novel writing in the same way I would a copywriting task - as a problem that needed solving. I do not write an outline which I think is a little bit unusual and I go down a lot of dead ends but I find that that exploration has allowed me to have a much fuller story than if I had stuck rigidly to my plan.”

But with copies of Lessons in Chemistry flying off the shelves, expectations for the next book must be seriously high.

“There is a little pressure but it is coming mostly from me,” she admits. “I am very excited about what I am working on, I just don’t have any time to get on with it. But believe me, I have no complaints.”

Bonnie Garmus will be at Readers Day at the Guildford Harbour Hotel on October 15. The event is part of the Guildford Book Festival which runs until November 3. For more details, visit: guildfordbookfestival.co.uk. Lessons in Chemistry is published by DoubleDay and available from local bookshops.