'Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself'

She might be fictional, but that hasn't stopped Elizabeth Zott from changing lives. Armed with a No. 2 pencil in her hair (to ward off assaults) and a complete refusal to abide by society's norms, she's become a feminist icon. Meet her creator, Bonnie Garmus.

- LIESL ROBERTSON

IF you’ve spent any time in a bookshop recently, you’ll no doubt recognise the brightly coloured cover of Bonnie Garmus’s debut novel.

Set in the 1950s and 1960s, Lessons in Chemistry is about a brilliant chemist, Elizabeth Zott, who very reluctantly becomes the host of a daytime TV cooking show when her scientific career is put on hold by workplace misogyny. The producers had a plan: Elizabeth was supposed to don a tight dress, smile and read the cue cards while she demonstrated recipes in her doilied, dolled-up TV kitchen. But instead of teaching run-of-the mill cooking, Elizabeth teaches chemistry, weaving in messages of personal empowerment and giving the ‘average Jane’ housewives at home more credit than they are used to getting. ‘It is my experience that far too many people do not appreciate the work and sacrifice that goes into being a wife, a mother, a woman. Well, I am not one of them. At the end of our 30 minutes together, we will have done something worth doing. We will have created something that will not go unnoticed. We will have made dinner. And it will matter.’

The book was a smash hit from the get-go, sparking a 16-way bidding war among publishers before it was snapped up by Doubleday. It has been translated into 40 languages, and it is sitting atop The New York Times best-selling hardback fiction list (at the time of going to press), where it has been for 45 weeks. There is also an Apple TV+ show in the works, starring Oscar-winner and Marvel star Brie Larson.