What inspired the idea behind this book?
The main inspiration came from a bad day at work! I’d been in a meeting which had been plagued by some average sexism, but for some reason on that day, I just couldn’t let it go. Later, when I got back to my desk (still mad!) I wrote the first chapter of Lessons in Chemistry.
On a related note, I set Lessons in Chemistry in the early 60s, not only because I wanted to reassure myself that we have made progress in terms of sexism, but also because that’s when my mother and all of the other so-called “average housewives” were at home. It was my way of saluting that generation of over-looked women. They endured a lot – but they also sparked a massive amount of change.
What was the research like for this book?
I’m not a scientist and the last time I took chemistry was as a teenager. So I bought a chemistry textbook from the 1950s and taught myself the basics. It was important to work from a 1950s textbook so I wouldn’t inadvertently stray into scientific anachronisms. And yet I still did! Several times, I came up with what I thought was some great chemical metaphor only to find one step of the interaction hadn’t been discovered until 1992 – so out it went. Once I’d finished, I asked two PhD scientists (both women; one is a working chemist) to check the book for accuracy. I slept a lot better after their review.
Do you write about people you know? Or yourself?
I don’t. All of my characters are entirely fictional except for one. Six-Thirty, the dog in the story, is based on my old dog, Friday. Although Friday didn’t know as many words as Six-Thirty, she was really smart and influenced the way I thought about human-species interaction and our place in the animal kingdom.
What’s the easiest and most difficult part of being a writer?
The easiest: there is no easiest. The hardest: not quitting. Writing requires a lot of endurance, patience, and self-criticism, the latter of which can lead to self-doubt. But writing well is its own reward. A lot of people say the art is in the rewrite and I would agree with that. But it’s usually the fifteenth rewrite not the third!
If you could give one piece of writing advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?
Write with confidence, trust your voice – and write the story you want to read.
Just finished the book!!
Could not put it down!
But, how or where did Avery Parker, a single women in the 1960’s or before…get the monies to fund the Parker Foundation???