How workplace misogyny prompted Bonnie Garmus to write her bestseller

I put a proposition to Bonnie Garmus. She was telling me how she had racked up 98 rejections for her first, unpublished novel and only the final one hinted that anyone had actually looked at the manuscript. “You can’t write a 700-page novel as a debut author,” was the message.

So I suggested I would wrangle all my savings and publish the book myself. “I can’t promise you a huge advance,” I warned.

Bonnie Garmus began writing Lessons in Chemistry when she was feeling particularly grumpy,Credit: Moya Nolan

After all, who wouldn’t be interested in an unseen novel from the author of Lessons in Chemistry, which since publication early last year has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the US, over 1.25 million in Britain and pushing 190,000 in Australia. The book is funny, smart and hugely enjoyable. What’s more, it has a wonderful dog romping through it who has a remarkable grasp of the English language. More about 6.30 – really, that’s his name – later.

Garmus probably thought I was mad. But she says no one has ever wanted to read that whopping first book – “not my agents, not my editors. I actually think it’s pretty well written.” But she dashes my vision of a lucrative coup by saying she’s borrowing a few things from that book for a new novel, “so it’s not a complete waste”.

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Lessons in Chemistry is about Elizabeth Zott negotiating life as a single mother in America in the early 1960s. She is a scientist with an ever-present pencil tucked in her hair bun, but her gender does her no favours in those days when the patriarchy’s grip was firmer. The only helping hand comes from Calvin Evans, the golden boy of the chemistry world who introduces her to rowing (one of Garmus’ passions).

When laboratory life proves torturous Elizabeth somehow stumbles into a gig as the presenter-with-a-difference of an afternoon cooking show, Supper at Six, which proves stunningly popular with her female audience. As she tells them: “Cooking is chemistry ... And chemistry is life. Your ability to change everything – including yourself – starts here.”

The book, which was published when Garmus was 64, has certainly changed her life and that of some readers. The copywriter-turned-bestseller who grew up in Riverside, the southern California city Newsweek once called “the armpit of the nation”, hears from besotted readers an astonishing 200-300 times a day. “It’s been an onslaught,” she says. “Some people have made dramatic changes in their lives based on the book, something I never anticipated.”

She began it in a particularly grumpy mood. She was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and at the advertising agency where she worked was the only woman in a pitch meeting for a major technology campaign.

“After I presented, no one said anything, which was fairly unusual. A few minutes later, a vice-president in the room said you know what I think we should do, and then he basically regurgitated everything I had said, even though there was a PowerPoint slide right behind me and he’s looking at it and claimed all the ideas as his. He got full credit for that campaign. No one said anything. No one defended me. No one did anything.”

Brie Larson stars as Elizabeth Zott in Apple TV’s forthcoming adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ book.Credit:

Speaking over Zoom from London, where she, her husband and 99, her greyhound, now live, she says she stomped back to her desk thinking “how many times has this happened to women in the world today, or this week, or this year? And I decided it was probably in the billions.”

So cross was she that, ignoring a copywriting deadline, she bashed out the first chapter and final three sentences of Lessons in Chemistry. That was in 2013.

She set the book in the late ’50s and early ’60s because “I needed reassurance that we had moved forward as women in the world and that day I wasn’t completely sure”. She also realised that she was writing about a woman of her mother’s generation.

Bonnie Garmus says her character Elizabeth Zott is her role model.Credit: Linda Hildrum

″”I had a chance to look back and think about everything those women in my neighbourhood had given up or had been forced to give up to be stay-at-home mums, which was really their only choice. And for me growing up, all those women were always called average housewives – it was very dismissive.”

But Elizabeth is not an iteration of her mother; rather, she is Garmus’ role model. “That day I felt like I needed a role model and that’s why I started to write.”

There is one character in the book, however, who does have a solid basis in reality, the “tall, gray, thin” dog called 6.30 (you’ll have to read the book to learn the reason for the name) with an impressive comprehension of English. His real-life equivalent was Garmus’ dog, Friday, a rescue hound who had been so abused her previous owner was jailed.

“She turned out to be the Einstein of dogs. In the book, Elizabeth is teaching her dog words but in real life Friday just learned words by listening.”

She followed conversations, keeping her eye on each speaker. And when Garmus would read her work out loud, “she would stare at me the entire time. Unfortunately, she died before the book ended, but the good thing is that she had already heard the last three sentences.”

Lewis Pullman as Calvin Evans and Brie Larson with 6.30, the dog.Credit:

And Friday, it seems, was bilingual. When the family moved to Switzerland, she had to pass a tricky Swiss obedience test – in German – to be legally registered. She was with the dog handler for an hour and when they came back he told Garmus Friday was not an American dog, but Swiss.

“He said this dog passed our test. She’s the only one who got 100 per cent in two years. That included all the Swiss dogs. So, she was really unusual.”

In the forthcoming Apple TV adaptation, Brie Larson plays Elizabeth and Lewis Pullman is Calvin. Garmus says the structure has changed because “no one writes a novel in exact 15-minute segments”. The series is still being edited, so she hasn’t seen it all, but says the experience hasn’t been horrible. “I got some good advice early on, which is you release your novel to them and then you back away ... You just kind of give up your trust.”

Garmus has always been concerned about privacy issues in the US, but says with social media it has become a real issue. Now with her new-found fame she is more guarded than previously. She is still amazed at the number of people who want a selfie when she does an event. “It’s just the strangest thing.”

She may be living in London, but home remains the US, and she expects to return to Seattle eventually. She was there at Christmas, but says she barely recognises the US now. With the strong shift to the right, she reckons the idea of democracy and civil discourse have been polluted. “Money seems to be the ruling decree there now. And there’s so much misinformation, and people are bombarded by it. They don’t know what to believe. So they believe what they see and you really can’t do that anymore.”

Garmus says that copywriting taught her not to bore people, and to be tough about sentence structure, length and communication.

“When I’m writing I always think of the same person, somebody who’s coming home from work on the Tube. They’re tired and they don’t want to read something that just goes on and on,” she said. “It’s a lot to ask somebody to sit down with your novel for eight or 10 hours. It’s a privilege for me to have someone read my book and I just don’t want to waste their time.”

No question of that with Lessons in Chemistry.

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO BONNIE GARMUS

1. Worst habit? Chocolate chip cookies.
2. Greatest fear? That the bakery down the street will run out.
3. The line that stayed with you? The opening line to Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”
4. Biggest regret? That I didn’t take more photos of my friends in our teens and twenties. It never occurred to any of us.
5. Favourite room? The room with the tall windows where I sit and write during the day. It’s the dining room, but also the reception room, kitchen, laundry, office, and library.
6. The artwork/song you wish was yours?  The theme to Mission Impossible.
7. If you could solve one thing... Climate change.

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