Fiction: Garmus swats Spider-Man from the top spot
Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry (Penguin) Bunsen-burned a hole in the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, climbing 11 places on its first week in the chart to leapfrog the World Book Day 2023 tranche and knock the Marvel Spider-Man Pocket Guide (DK Children’s) from the top. The paperback shifted 25,569 copies in its second week on sale, improving by just over 1,000 copies on its launch week and making it already the eighth-bestselling fiction title of the year.
Following a number one lockdown by Prince Harry and Nathan Anthony’s first Bored of Lunch cookbook for the first two months of 2023, then the World Book Day title’s ascent to the top a fortnight ago, Lessons in Chemistry has become the first Adult Fiction book in the number one spot since Richard Osman’s The Bullet that Missed in the run-up to Christmas Eve 2022, and the first paperback fiction title at the top since Colleen Hoover’s It Ends with Us (S&S) in August last year.
Lessons in Chemistry started with a bang last year, when its hardback shifted 185,260 copies to become the second-bestselling fiction début of the year, with only Bob Mortimer’s The Satsuma Complex (S&S) ahead. Nearly a year on from publication, the hardback was still regularly notching up second and third place in the Original Fiction chart in the early weeks of 2023. Of course, with its Apple TV+ adaptation in the works, this could be just the start of the title’s stay in the Top 50.
Garmus’ début claimed the Mass Market Fiction number one for a second week, as the top 20 saw the previous week’s new entries shuffle around. Reverend Richard Coles’ Murder Before Evensong (W&N) jumped into second place, leapfrogging Colleen Hoover and Tarryn Fisher’s Never Never (HQ), and Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place Wrong Time, (Penguin) Lessons in Chemistry’s fellow Waterstones Book of the Month title, clocked in in fourth place.
Mother’s Day gift-buying was in the air, with Milly Johnson’s Together, Again (S&S), Sara Cox’s Thrown (Coronet) and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (S&S) rising up the chart and Sheila O’Flanagan’s What Eden Did Next (Headline) débuting in 15th.
Margaret Atwood’s short story collection Old Babes in the Wood (Chatto & Windus) débuted atop the Original Fiction top 20, the author’s second title to top the category chart since her Booker winner The Testaments in 2019. James Patterson’s 23rd Midnight (Century) jumped in second, as Alice Winn’s In Memoriam (Viking) became the second-highest new entry in fourth.
