Bonnie Garmus: Lessons in Chemistry - and how to write a best-selling novel
Bonnie Garmus author: "I needed to reassure myself that we’ve actually made progress - and of course we have, but not enough." Pic: Moya Nolan
Elizabeth Zott is a scientist – brilliant, singular, driven. She is not interested in stories, but facts. She works within an all-male team at the Hastings Research Institute in southern California, and her passion is abiogenesis – the origin of life from non-living matter. She is an atheist and a lone parent.
The problem is, it’s 1961. Zott’s fellow scientists do not see her as an equal, never mind a brilliant scientist, but rather someone who should be making the coffee. All but one man, Calvin Evans, a Nobel Prize nominated scientist who falls in love with her mind. But nothing is ever straightforward.
