[COPY] A conversation with the bestselling novelist Bonnie Garmus
"I really had no idea how much people would care about my age. It’s the last thing that matters in writing. What does matter is working at the craft."
Bonnie Garmus is something of a marvel — a writer who, after a long international career as a copywriter in California, Switzerland and UK, published her first novel Lessons In Chemistry at the age of 64. The manuscript sold in a 16-way auction, published to near-unanimous critical acclaim and landed on bestseller lists on both side of the Atlantic. Since then Garmus has been characterised as an outlier in the press and while she is an unusual talent, I worry this narrative misses the point of her success. As she herself is quick to point out, her story as a writer, is actually nothing new. She’s less a “break out” anomaly, than a study in the power of persistence — specifically, the hard-won experience that comes from the tireless, meticulous work of arranging and rearranging words on the page.
The work of a writer is, for the most part, quiet, painstaking and quotidian. We type, we delete, we cut, we paste, we type and type, then delete and type again. And there are many of us who, like Garmus, spend decades honing our craft in one commercial form or another (be it journalism, corporate writing, ghosting, academic stuff, copy for the back of cereal boxes, celebrity Instagram captions — whatever). And while earning our keep, many writers are also privately attempting to master another (often more creative and less securely remunerative) form. But the divide between these two kinds of labour is overstated. Just as pausing at a creative impasse to take a walk or bake a pie is part of ‘the work’ so is the writing we do to pay the bills.
Viewed in this way, Garmus is a refreshing antidote to the myth that those of us who work in journalism or commercial/technical writing are in danger of wasting our talent or sapping the creative impulse through more pragmatic technical pursuits. In my experience (and in Garmus’s), all writing begets better writing — it’s as simple as that. If you aspire to be a poet, not only is there is no shame in writing press releases to put food on the table — chances are it will help.
Before Lessons in Chemistry, Garmus, like J.K. Rowling, Douglas Stuart and countless others before her, had years of false starts in her fiction. These included at least one unpublished novel that was sent out and rejected almost one hundred separate times. And while it’s true that eking out a career as a novelist or a screenwriter, say, is more challenging than finding work as a speech writer or a magazine editor, the latter are hardly unskilled labour. Every form of writing is exceedingly difficult to execute to a high standard. All of it requires patience, persistence and skill. To master one form in a career is an enormous accomplishment, but to master two or more requires a rare mixture of self-belief and self-criticism, combined with a quiet unflinching power of will.
In our interview, Garmus and I discuss just this — the importance of what she calls “working at the craft,” the hard thankless graft of trying and failing and trying again, through which a writer slowly gets better bit by bit. Copy-writing, she explains, taught her to “think broadly but write concisely,” an invaluable skill for any aspiring novelist. So yes, while Lessons In Chemistry is Garmus’s first published work, it is also, more crucially the culmination of years of experience and labour on the page. This is just one of the lessons we can — and should — take from both her extraordinary story and book.
Set in California in the early 1960s, Lessons in Chemistry follows the story of Elizabeth Zott, a ravishingly beautiful, highly intelligent and unapologetically exacting scientist who, in her 30s, finds herself turfed from her chosen profession for the crime of being pregnant and unwed. In a strange twist of fate she is reluctantly thrust into the national spotlight as a cookery show host in the early days of American TV. Figuring she needs to break a few eggs to make a revenge omelette, Zott leverages her newfound domestic goddess star power to give the housewives of America an education in chemistry. The novel that results is seductive, arch, funny and unapologetically clever — a study in the power of fame, science, female rage and a devastating critique of institutional sexism. A book you’ll read in one dose.
LM: Bonnie. Your first novel, Lessons in Chemistry, sold in advance to 35 countries around the world, became a number one bestseller all over the map, received countless rave reviews and is now being made into a TV series. How can you even stand yourself?
BG: Oh that’s easy: I live in a constant state of denial. Since this is my first published book, I have nothing else to compare it to. Also, I’m one of those authors who doesn’t read reviews or track sales; the former because there’s nothing I can do to change the book—it’s in print! And the latter because I can’t do math.
LM: Seriously though, it must be very surreal. The upsides of success are obvious – but what’s the downside? Or even just the weird side – of having this runaway hit in middle life after your kids have grown up and you’ve had this a long and established career as a copywriter? I mean, it’s not like you’re Sally Rooney – you’re a fully-formed grown up woman and you didn’t ‘burst on the scene’ or ‘come from nowhere.’ You’ve lived a whole life! How has the book’s reception changed your sense of yourself as a writer and person. And also, how have your friends, family and colleagues reacted? What’s changed or not changed, as the case may be?
BG: It's the strangest thing to me (and I’m sure I sound very naïve when I say this!), but I really had no idea how much people would care about my age. It’s the last thing that matters in writing. What does matter is working at the craft--getting better--and for that I’m grateful for my copywriting career which forced me to think broadly but write concisely. So many excellent novelists were once copywriters. Also, I think Sally Rooney is amazing, but I’d argue that she is also a fully grown woman! People tend to think there’s some sort of timeline to achieve things but there isn’t (unless you’re an athlete—then the clock is ticking). So, no, I haven’t lived a whole life, nor has Sally, nor has anyone else unless they’re… well…dead.
As for the downside, I don’t like to have a lot of attention on me. I think I’m a typical writer: best left alone. But people have mostly been very kind and supportive and I can’t ask for more than that. So I’d say this experience hasn’t really changed me or the perception I have of myself. I’m the same writer, I still labor at sentence structure, transitions, and flow, and I still wear terrible clothes and don’t comb my hair.
LM: You grew up in California and now live in London, England – a North American transplant like me. How long have you been here and what prompted the move? Do you hate the sun or just really like crumpets?
BG: I hate the sun. Seriously. I hate being hot. My family left California when I was thirteen -- we were transferred to South America -- but I returned seven years later to northern California for school and work. The last city I’m from is Seattle; in fact, we still have a house there. We keep it because when we were first transferred to Switzerland (for my husband’s job) and then London (his job again) we were always told the assignment was only going to last a year or two. Which morphed into twelve years. I love Switzerland and London, but I miss gray and rainy Seattle. I get a lot more work done in shitty weather.
LM: How has living in the UK affected your writing in terms of language, sensibility and humour, if at all? (Personally I feel like it’s changed mine a lot, and exclusively in a good way.)
BG: Well, Jesus, now I feel bad because I’d have to say it hasn’t affected me at all! Case in point: I still don’t add the extra “u” in humor, but you did because you are smarter and better than me.
LM: We share an agent in the dazzling Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown. Do you find her as intimidatingly glamorous as I do? If so how do you cope with it? And do you think it’s a healthy thing to have an agent who’s far more glamorous than oneself?
BG: I’m not sure what you mean when you say my agent is more glamorous than I am. I was under the impression that my wrinkled clothes, matted hair, thick socks, all those little hairbands that cut off circulation to my wrist were fashionable. But glamour aside, I can’t believe my good fortune to have the almost-as-glamourous Felicity Blunt as my agent. She’s so smart, so dynamic, so extremely hardworking, and yet so humble. I hit the agent jackpot.
LM: In a strange way, your own story dovetails with the story of your unforgettable main character Elizabeth Zott (a middle aged chemist in mid-century America who gets fired from her job for being an unwed mother after enduring years of institutional sexism and becomes a reluctant TV cooking show celebrity). How much of you is in her? And are you actually a covert nuclear physicist posing as a celebrated feminist novelist?
BG: Hmmm… I don’t think my own story dovetails with Elizabeth’s at all (also, side note: is thirty really considered middle-aged? I had no idea. I thought thirty was young.) But anyway, no, I’m not Elizabeth Zott and my own story does not follow hers. But have I experienced sexism? Yes—just like every other woman on earth. So Elizabeth and I do share that in common, but otherwise I’m not a chemist, I don’t like to cook, I’ve never had a show on TV, I’m not a single mom, I don’t live in SoCal…the list is long. Three cheers for imagination! It’s fun to make up a whole world. And it gives me the freedom to explore themes and ideas without being locked into a rigid reality. I know people tend to think novels are autobiographical, but that’s not true for me. While I share some of Elizabeth’s beliefs, I’m not her. Unfortunately!
LM: I reread your novel and loved it just as much the second time round. And it occurred to me that one of the things it does incredibly well is offer a feminist perspective on the world (through the beady jaundiced eye of Elizabeth) that is both angry and hilarious. Angry hilarious, or funny dark, is such a hard tone to maintain but when it works there’s just nothing better – it’s cathartic, socially meaningful and deeply pleasurable all at once. (I also recently watched Sharon Horgan’s series Bad Sisters, which has the same vibe.) Did you have this tone in mind when you set out to write the book? Or was the tone set by Elizabeth?
BG: Thank you for reading twice and still liking it! As for the tone, it was set by Elizabeth. She’s a smart person—just as smart as the brilliant Calvin Evans, but because she’s female, her intelligence goes unrecognized. What I like about Elizabeth is that she never dumbs herself down. I wouldn’t say she’s jaundiced or even beady-eyed—I’d say she’s determined but also saddened by her losses and fed up by the ridiculous barriers people (including women) try and place on her. Her uncompromising nature allows those who come into contact with her to react in a multitude of ways—with anger, awe, frustration—which lends itself to humor. The tone wasn’t at all hard to maintain. It was hard to write the sad parts and fun to write the fun parts. But what ties it together are the ideas that make it a social commentary. That was kind of hard.
LM: On the surface, the plot of your book is pretty strange. It’s so many unlikely things coming together, a period piece about a jaded feminist single mother scientist posing as a cookery show host… and yet it all somehow it forms whole that is far more than the sum of it’s parts (yes, the chemistry metaphor). But it really it’s a book you just have to read to ‘get it’ and getting people to read books, particularly people in the publishing industry, can sometimes be hard…. Did you encounter any resistance at first? I mean, you spent years writing it, how did you talk about it? It just doesn’t sound plausible and yet obviously it is. Did you ever falter along the way?
BG: Every writer falters. If you know a writer who doesn’t, please don’t tell me! I don’t like talking about what I’m writing because it changes as I work and I’m a terrible explainer because, yes, my plots are “strange.” (Which I take as a compliment because “strange” is another word for “imaginative.”) I don’t want to write the same old, same old; I don’t want to jump on any trends or bandwagons; I don’t want to impress people. I just want to tell an all-engrossing story. That’s it. At the end of my book, I want people to feel like they’ve been on a great trip around the sun instead of feeling like they just wasted ten hours of their lives. And yes, there was some resistance, because when you don’t follow the writing rules, it scares people. Agents and editors have many important things to consider: the market, the reaction, the acceptance—I don’t. My job is to tell a story. Their job is to tell me if there’s an audience for “strange.” So, yes, sometimes we disagreed because “strange” can mean “unsaleable.” Which is why I listened to every bit of advice and concern. Some of the advice I took, some I didn’t. I’ve been writing a long time; this isn’t my first rodeo feedback or writing outside-the-norm-wise. It’s my job to write with confidence and defend my ideas, but it’s also my job to be open. Arrogance is not something I admire in a writer.
LM: Tell us about the TV series. How did the deal come together? Did you visit the set? What was it like seeing something that existed first in your imagination then on the page suddenly becoming tangible? Were there any awkward moments? What surprised you most about the process as an author?
BG: The TV series is shooting now (Aggregate Films/Apple TV+) and will be streaming by late summer or early fall 2023. I’m not writing the script, but I get to make notes on the scripts (which they’re not required to take or even read!). A series is a different animal from a book—it won’t be the same as the book nor should it be. I’m so lucky to have the team I have—the actors, the producers, the set designers—everyone! And I’m so happy to let them apply their own imaginations to this story. As for how it came together—it was a lot like the book auctions. Studios bid, then we narrowed it down to eight, then Aggregate (whom I ended up choosing) took it to Apple TV+. I hope to visit the set next month. I never expected to see it come down the pike this quickly—that’s been the biggest surprise.
LM: You’ve said that part of the reason you were driven to finish the book was because it offered an mental and emotional escape from Trump’s America, and I found this fascinating because it’s a sentiment I’ve heard echoed by a number of American female authors, among them Lauren Groff, who’s brilliant historical novel Matrix about the life of Marie de France came out around the same time as yours. Matrix and Lessons in Chemistry could not be more different but in many ways they share similar themes in that they are period pieces that follow the lives of a singular and unlikely feminist heroine. And both are just sort of bonkers and brilliant and joyous and angry, while offering a plausible and urgent feminist perspective on the world that comes from an historical place that is decidedly not now – or five years ago. Do you see yourself as part of a moment or a wave of American feminist fiction writers who’ve come out with unlikely but brilliant works about the female experience as a response to the Trump years?
BG: Well…no, not really! I don’t follow trends nor try to be part of one. But do I detest Trump? God, yes. But the book didn’t offer an escape from Trump—if anything, it made me do a deep dive into everything he stands for: sexism, racism, a rejection of science, general idiocy, and bad taste.
LM: In the book you employ free indirect style, a shifting but interior third person perspective that allows you access into the minds of various other characters, minor and major. It’s a tricky thing to pull off but you manage it so well. Did you conceive the book in this way? Also, Elizabeth’s interior monologue is so blistering and vivid, did you ever toy with first person singular? Why or why not?
BG: Elizabeth Zott is a catalyst, so I wanted the book’s storytelling to reflect not only her centrality, but her ability to change lives by using lots of points of view and putting them (sometimes) on the same page which is usually (always) frowned upon. The ten points of view allowed me to better see and hear how people react to her (get it—react!). So writing it from the first person wouldn’t have worked. The book really is about chemistry—of bonds we break as humans that then recombine to form new, hopefully better, relationships.
LM: Are you much of a cook yourself? What’s your relationship to food in general? What are you having for dinner tonight?
BG: I’m not a great cook, probably because I have zero passion for cooking. I can “make” dinner, but no one’s going to take a photo and post it on Instagram. I love, admire, and appreciate people who cook well. They all deserve someone like me who will do all the cleanup. My husband loves to cook, his meals are always great, and everything he makes always look exactly like the photo. It’s amazing. As for my relationship to food, I guess I’d say I’m for it.