{"id":651595,"date":"2026-10-11T15:40:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T15:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/651595\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T15:40:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T15:40:17","slug":"author-bonnie-garmus-ive-gotten-so-many-death-threats-the-andrew-tate-crowd-is-alive-and-well-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/651595\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Bonnie Garmus: \u2018I\u2019ve gotten so many death threats. The Andrew Tate crowd is alive and well\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eleven years ago, Bonnie Garmus almost drowned in a lake in Switzerland<\/a>. She was swimming across Lake Zurich, near where she and her family were living, before they moved to London in 2017. She was a strong swimmer, but it was dark, 5.30am, before the ferries had started, and it was foggy, far foggier than she had realised when she set off. <\/p>\n

Usually it took her 25 minutes to swim across the lake. But when Garmus glanced at her watch, she realised she had been swimming for 45 minutes. She started to panic. She couldn\u2019t feel her feet, her hands or her face. \u201cThe fog was getting much worse. My goggles were fogging up. I kept getting turned around. I kept thinking, \u2018any minute I\u2019ll see the lights of the bridge, or I\u2019ll see the lights of something\u2019, and I never did. I began to think I was going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, all of a sudden, she looked up and saw this huge swan, wings flapping, bearing down on the water, \u201clike an enormous duvet cover\u201d or \u2013 she feared, thinking death \u2013 \u201can angel\u201d. The swan hustled her in the water, harrying her like a sheep dog, until it was positioned behind her. \u201cIt started hurting me and I started to swim, and then it went out in front of me. I decided that maybe it was going to lead me to shore where its babies were. I wasn\u2019t sure \u2013 swans don\u2019t like people. But every time I took a stroke, it let me touch its back. About 25 minutes later, I saw the schwimmbad come into view. There was the ladder. The swan had stuck with me the whole way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comfortably ensconced in her London home, wearing a red and white floral top, glasses perched atop her head, Garmus says over a video call that \u201cit was the stupidest mistake I\u2019ve made with my life ever\u201d. <\/p>\n

As a story retold, however, it\u2019s the kind of unnerving, fairy-dust-laden anecdote you could only imagine coming from the author of Lessons in Chemistry, a global bestseller that features a dog, Six-Thirty, who has learned nearly 1,000 words and helps Elizabeth Zott, the novel\u2019s brilliant chemist turned TV chef, to the point where he even teaches words to her unborn child.<\/p>\n

Surprising, endearing, joyful, heartbreaking and strongly feminist, Lessons in Chemistry took everyone by surprise when it was published in 2022, not least Garmus herself. <\/p>\n

Until that point, Garmus was a copywriter coming up to retirement age. Lessons in Chemistry changed everything. Garmus wrote the first chapter after a meeting in which her voice went unheard by her male counterparts. Elizabeth, her lead character, was a woman in 1950s California who triumphed against the patriarchy; against convention and against that chorus of put-down voices. <\/p>\n

The book was adapted into a successful Apple+ series starring Brie Larson<\/a>. It inspired women around the world. And it made Garmus into a kind of flash point \u2013 a hero to some, a target to others. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people assume it must be fun to have a bestseller, but I can\u2019t tell you, I\u2019ve gotten so many death threats over Lessons in Chemistry,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was really hard to take. It\u2019s ongoing.\u201d Why? \u201cA woman chemist? The Andrew Tate<\/a> crowd is alive and well. They contact me through my website or send DMs. And I\u2019m not the only one. Women novelists especially go through this. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Lessons in Chemistry: An alchemy of dry wit, sharp satire and original premiseOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I get attacked like that for being female, I just think, they clearly don\u2019t know their chemistry, because if they did know their chemistry, they would understand what women are made of,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

For every horrible message Garmus has received, she has received another from a woman who tells her how much the book has helped them. She is a firm believer in helping people believe in themselves. \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone with a dream is ridiculous,\u201d she says. \u201cEverything that you do, if you don\u2019t take action on it, then it won\u2019t get done. But all it really requires is a thick skin and perseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I love about that book is how it\u2019s inspired people to say, \u2018It\u2019s not over for me yet\u2019. Since Lessons in Chemistry came out, I have seen a whole mass of women who decided in their 40s and 50s to go to med school, and they did, and they\u2019re doctors. To get [those] emails and DMs from people, I didn\u2019t see that coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

The youngest of four girls, Garmus didn\u2019t come from a wealthy background. Raised in California (she has also lived in Seattle and Geneva), her mother was a nurse in the 1980s, during the Aids crisis, and her father was an entomologist. She grew up wanting to write, but understanding she needed to make a living. \u201cFiction is terrible in terms of making a living.\u201d <\/p>\n

She did a three-month writing course at Curtis Brown, but it was her career in copywriting, she says, that turned her into a successful novelist. \u201cWe are always pretending we know and we have to do enormous research to come up to speed, like I did with chemistry,\u201d she says. \u201cYou get to learn and it\u2019s this gift that you get on the job. I didn\u2019t always love what I learned, but it keeps you curious, it keeps you alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garmus\u2019s new novel, Peck & Peck, takes her into uncharted waters once more. Set around the offices of Peck & Peck, a prestigious poetry quarterly in New York in the 1980s, it\u2019s a whimsical, lovingly crafted and frequently very funny story of Batter, a college graduate named after a dog (a heroic dog naturally), whose dream is to become an editor at the poetry house. <\/p>\n

\"BonnieBonnie Garmus: ‘With age, you already know what you\u2019ve survived’ <\/p>\n

Batter has an ear \u2013 he naturally knows that \u201can anapaest is a metrical foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable, which, when written as a tetrameter, makes the sound of galloping hooves\u201d. But that doesn\u2019t make him savvy in all areas of his life. As he bumbles into unfolding chaos in the senior ranks at Peck & Peck, he must try to score a promotion, appease his parents and improve his romantic prospects. <\/p>\n

For the new novel, Garmus realised she needed to investigate the world of poetry. \u201cI am not a huge poetry person. I went into it kicking and screaming, thinking, \u2018I\u2019m not sure this should be my centre point, but when I started researching it \u2013 it took six or eight months of intensive study \u2013 I realised, first of all, how little I knew of this art form. Second of all, how stunning it is. It\u2019s like buried treasure. For one of the most overlooked, underloved art forms, it packs one of the strongest punches you can find in the art world.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The best new books to look out for in autumn 2026Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, for a novel that is so consumed with poetry, there is very little poetry in the book. \u201cI had a poem from Seamus Heaney<\/a> in the book and I had trouble getting permission for it, so I had to take it out,\u201d she says ruefully. \u201cI didn\u2019t realise this about poetry, but if you use one line you have to get permission for it. I\u2019m a huge fan of his. It really hurt to take his [poem] out. I also had to take out Carl Sandburg and [Charles] Bukowski, it was a nightmare.\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead, the novel is peppered with references to poems, from Adrienne Rich\u2019s Diving into the Wreck to TS Eliot\u2019s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufock. There are also contemplations about the life of a poet (\u201cThe words, \u2018I made a killing in poetry\u2019, have never been uttered,\u201d reflects Batter), and literary jokes: the slightly woo-woo WB Yeats<\/a> is on a list of poets who must always receive an automatic rejection letter from Peck & Peck. <\/p>\n

Garmus keeps the tone uplifting and warm. \u201cI want the books to be perceived as serious but fun,\u201d she says. \u201cIn Lessons in Chemistry, I\u2019m talking about misogyny. In Peck & Peck, I\u2019m talking about conformity. I want to talk about serious topics but put some fun around it. I think it\u2019s imperative that we keep our sense of humour. It\u2019s sometimes the only way people will connect.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s talking about fiction, but she might as well be referring to the vogue for carefully skirting the fraught subject of US politics. Garmus has amassed considerable wealth since the publication of Lessons in Chemistry (to the extent that her two adult daughters changed her name in their phones from \u201cMum\u201d to \u201cglobal phenomenon\u201d). She gives much of it to charities that kick against the Trump<\/a> regime \u2013 Pen in the US (against book banning), Planned Parenthood (for safe and available abortions<\/a>) and \u201canything to preserve and help children\u2019s lives around the world\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Benjamin Alire S\u00e1enz: ‘\u2018As a former Catholic priest, I understood what it meant to have a calling to poetry\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Money hasn\u2019t changed her, except to give her more latitude to be exactly as she is: low-key and low-maintenance. She gleefully recounts the story of a time on stage during a US book tour when she put her hand into her jacket pocket, the pocket ripped and her keys fell out on to the stage. \u201cThe moderator said: \u2018Can\u2019t we afford a new jacket?\u2019,\u201d she recalls with a laugh. \u201cI wore my [male] publicist\u2019s jacket after that. We didn\u2019t have time to go shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generous with her time, Garmus is surprisingly candid for a global phenomenon. Of the Lessons in Chemistry adaptation, she doesn\u2019t mince her words. \u201cI got advice after I\u2019d sold the book from some very famous authors. They reached out and said, \u2018Okay, so now Hollywood has your book. So here\u2019s what you do: you run the other way, you never turn around, you never look back.\u2019 And of course I did turn around and I did look back, and that causes problems.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

What did she struggle with? \u201cOh like, they\u2019re missing Six-Thirty or the rowing is completely wrong \u2013 that\u2019s not how you erg. The tone was a little different. But I\u2019m lucky to have it made. I\u2019m grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it came time for her to write her second book, she says, there were publishing types who had a rinse-and-repeat version of Lessons in Chemistry on their vision board. She didn\u2019t care. \u201cWith age, you already know what you\u2019ve survived,\u201d she says. \u201cThe fact that people want this win or that win, they want a very certain kind of story. That has no impact on me at all. I\u2019m sure some of these people wish it did. I think they wanted me to write the sequel to Lessons in Chemistry and I said, \u2018No, I\u2019m writing something new\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

She smiles, and you can hear the spirit of Elizabeth Zott in her words. \u201cI\u2019m a copywriter. We never write the same thing twice.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Poem of the Week: Towards Rapture by Charlotte BuckleyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Peck & Peck is published by Manilla Press on October 13th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven years ago, Bonnie Garmus almost drowned in a lake in Switzerland. She was swimming across Lake Zurich,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[12891,69114,61354,969,93,61,60,42017,102923],"class_list":["post-651595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-abortion","tag-andrew-tate","tag-brie-larson","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-seamus-heaney","tag-wb-yeats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}