Bonnie Garmus Returns with Peck & Peck After Lessons in Chemistry's 9m Copies

By Tom Whitfield

Bonnie Garmus's second novel, Peck & Peck, arrives on the heels of a debut that sold 9 million copies worldwide. The Guardian's review, published 13 October, calls the new book "laugh-out-loud funny" — an offbeat tale of machinations at an eccentric poetry magazine in 1980s New York, and what the critic describes as a paean to the power of poetry.

The bar is high. Garmus's debut, Lessons in Chemistry (2022), spent the best part of two years on the Sunday Times bestseller list and has been translated into more than 40 languages. In 2023 it became an Emmy-winning television series. A year later, New York Times readers voted it one of their top 100 books of the 21st century.

The novel's reach extended beyond publishing. Elizabeth Zott, its heroine, made such a splash that her favoured brand of rowing machine saw a spike in sales.

Why did the debut sell 9 million copies?

The Guardian review points to timing. In the aftermath of #MeToo, readers embraced a heroine who refuses to be cowed by injustice — a gifted research chemist forced out of her lab by rampant 1950s misogyny, who becomes the inspirational host of a TV cooking show.

The book's engine, the review argues, is its balance: a propulsive mashup of feminism and fairytale, darkness with whimsy, heartbreak with hope, wrapped around a shamelessly inspirational message. Garmus gives that message directly to Zott's audience of housewives in the TV studio:

"Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started."

The quote has travelled as far as the book itself — a large part of why the debut became, in the review's words, a global phenomenon.

What does this change for Garmus's second act?

A debut that sells 9 million copies is a publishing event; a follow-up is a test. The review signals that Peck & Peck keeps the comic register — "zany" and "offbeat" are its adjectives — while swapping the laboratory for the poetry magazine and the 1950s for the 1980s. What the excerpt does not say is whether the new book repeats the inspirational directness that made Elizabeth Zott a phenomenon; the full review sits behind the Guardian's continue-reading link.

The proven facts, at least, are these:

• Lessons in Chemistry has sold 9 million copies worldwide
• It spent nearly two years on the Sunday Times bestseller list
• It has been translated into more than 40 languages
• It became an Emmy-winning TV series in 2023
• Peck & Peck is set in 1980s New York, at an eccentric poetry magazine

Readers who loved Zott's exhortation to "get started" will find out soon enough whether the poetry-magazine schemers of Peck & Peck can carry a second act of that size.