It’s fairly difficult to ride the underground without seeing someone reading a copy of Lessons in Chemistry. The novel skyrocketed to fame after its April 2022 release, now being sold in 42 different territories and recently achieving success through its television adaptation. The book is the debut novel of author Bonnie Garmus, but although the words of Lessons in Chemistry are very much her own, when I spoke to her I found that its recent adaptations lacked this creative control.

“I’ll be leaving for Barcelona soon for the Jordi festival, then California, for a talk at Stanford. From there, I go to Auckland, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney. I was in India in February, and before that, Germany,” Bonnie tells me. Her worldwide travels reflect her worldwide success: she has won awards on three different continents now, which led me to wonder whether she feels any pressure to do equally well on her second book. Decisively, my concern is shut down, “No. If I were to go into another novel thinking it has to be just as good as the last, I’d be writing from a place of fear – and that’s a weak position. I always want to write with confidence – to believe in what I have to say.”

“I always want to write with confidence – to believe in what I have to say”

Bonnie’s confidence only wanes slightly when describing the ‘adaptations’ of her work, a phrase she commended me for using: “I’m glad you used the word adaptation because that’s exactly what it is. When a book gets picked up by Hollywood, it’s a given that there will be changes; you have to be brave and roll with the punches.” I sensed a twinge of disappointment as she explained how the book’s recent Apple TV spinoff “ended up straying from the main themes of feminism and science that informed Elizabeth Zott.” She expressed similar upset with the US cover which depicts a pink background with a woman peering seductively through her glasses. “I don’t think it accurately reflects the content or style of the book – it looks like the book is a romance or rom-com, or just for women, which it is not”, she tells me. “I know the publisher has a sense of what sells – but sometimes that sense doesn’t make complete sense because it ignores a large population of readers”. A statement that I agreed with whilst reminiscing about the UK cover which inspired me to purchase the book: bold lettering taken from the Periodic Table. “The author knows their book better than anyone. I think we should always be involved from the very beginning.”

The novel is deeply engaged in feminist discourse, so it was somewhat perplexing that reviews dubbed it a “rom-com”. Bonnie wasted no time in refuting this label. “Lessons in Chemistry is definitely not a rom-com. There’s nothing funny about sexual assault, death, or ceding control over one’s body to society, nor is there anything remotely funny about being put down or held back at work because you happen to be a woman. And believe me, there’s nothing funny in having one’s work credited to a man, ask Rosalind Franklin. But having said all that, yes, the book is deliberately a cross between humour and tragedy – because you can’t preach at people and get your point across. If you have something big to say about terrible things, sometimes the best way to get at that darkness is through humour.”

“If you have something big to say about terrible things, sometimes the best way to get at that darkness is through humour”

With each new sentence, my mind began drawing parallels between Bonnie and the book’s main character, Elizabeth Zott. Maybe it was the English student in me, but I wanted to know, who inspired Bonnie’s protagonist? Her answer surprised me. “When I wrote Elizabeth Zott, I was writing my own role model, but I dedicated the book to my mum because she, like Zott, had to give up her career as a nurse to stay home and raise four children.” Though she assured me that her mum would not have appreciated Elizabeth Zott being an atheist or her unwillingness to marry, “she would have enjoyed seeing her stand up for herself.” Glowing with pride Bonnie continued, “my mum loved being a nurse; it made her feel important and productive and she was great at it”, “she won Nurse of the Year at her hospital within her first year back.”

The novel is set in Cambridge, Garmus citing “the fact that Frederick Sanger, the Nobel-prize-winning biochemist, was teaching at Cambridge” in the period the novel is set, as well as her love of rowing (a hobby she still enjoys) as reasons for the location. Regardless of Bonnie’s background in creative writing, she expressed a keen interest in Chemistry, explaining how the homely act of cooking (Zott’s career) is itself chemistry. During the period that Lessons in Chemistry is set, “women could only be on TV as an attractive add-on to a male host, or doing something home-related.” Bonnie explains, “thus cooking, thus chemistry. I had to teach it to myself from an old fifties textbook – it’s hard to Google old science accurately.”

Bonnie’s refusal to write simply on what she already knows encourages me and her readers to explore what we know less about. She echoes this as the interview comes to a close: “I hope readers will take one big thing from the book: you cannot allow others to design your future. If someone ever tells you you’re not good enough, stop and consider the source. Then prove them wrong.”