Behind the Story: Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel, Lessons In Chemistry, is soon to be an Apple+ TV series

Book cover with pink background and illustration woman wearing sunglasses with a pencil stuck in her blonde bun

Bonnie Garmus’ debut novel, Lessons in Chemistry, has garnered the attention of readers around the world. A fixture on the New York Times bestseller list—the title has been on the list for more than 60 weeks—Lessons in Chemistry is already heading to the screen with an Apple+ series set to debut in the fall.

With Lessons in Chemistry in high rotation at our local library and a favorite of book clubs across the country, we wanted to know more about the novel and how Garmus, a seasoned copywriter and creative director, came to write it at 66.

Where did the idea come from?

Lessons in Chemistry is the story of Elizabeth Zott, a research chemist in the 1950s and 1960s whose scientific career is stymied by sexism—then takes a sharp detour when she becomes the host of a popular TV cooking show. Zott, who knows she is a chemist at heart, isn’t exactly thrilled, but uses the show to encourage women to push back against the status quo of society. Garmus says she started writing Lessons in Chemistry after a frustrating meeting at work where a male colleague took credit for one of her ideas. She’d been trying to rework her first novel, which had been rejected 98 times, but instead sat down and wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry. “I now call that 'constructive anger,’” Garmus said in an interview with Tracy Smith for CBS News. “I could hear her in my head. I knew she wanted to tell me that her decade was even worse.”

Elizabeth Zott presents a different kind of role model, especially in the time period of the book. Why was that important to Garmus?

“I just thought it would be really interesting to have a character who took herself seriously and never thought about what she looked like, never doubted herself,” Garmus said in the CBS News interview for “CBS Sunday Morning.” “Basically, I was writing my role model!” Some have called the novel subversive or feminist.

The character is also a “salute to” Garmus’ mother, a nurse who is the same age as the lead character of Lessons in Chemistry—and who continued to work while pregnant in the same era as the novel.

In other interviews, Garmus has characterized Elizabeth and her debut novel about the character as “a love letter to scientists and the scientific brain” (New York Times).

What was Garmus’ writing process like?

When Garmus returned from a meeting where a male colleague had taken credit for her ideas, she sat down and wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry—but that wasn’t all. She also wrote the last three sentences of the book. “That gave me something to aim at,” the author said in an interview with Jane Mitchell. “And those three sentences still stand today.”

Elsewhere, Garmus has said that she had been working on the novel off and on for several years, between work and several moves, and had begun to worry she’d never finish it. She signed up for a course with Curtis Brown Creative, a creative writing school led by literary agents, called “Write to the End of Your Novel.” “I thought ‘Hey! I can be done with my novel in six weeks!’ Which...I wasn't,” Garmus said in a Q&A with CBC. “But it didn't matter because the course got me out of my slump.”

Is Garmus a chemist?

In short, the answer is no. But as someone who seeks to be authentic, Garmus did consult a decades-old chemistry textbook called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, published just a few years before the novel’s setting (New York Times). She even tried some of the experiments from the book, which was a little more exciting than she’d planned. “One of my neighbors saw flames through the window and called the fire department,” Garmus said.

”Anyway, I learned the hard way. You should really take this really seriously!" (CBS)

Sources consulted for this article:

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