Felicity Blunt is the literary agent behind the bestselling debut novelLessons in Chemistry,now a TV show.
She also represents her husband, Stanley Tucci.
A pencil pierces her bun.
It is calledLessons in Chemistryand it is thedebut novel by Bonnie Garmus.
8 on theNew York Timeshardcover fiction bestseller list.
But read it and youll find that it is the opposite of cynical.
The literary agents name is Felicity Blunt, and she is arguably the most glamorous person working in books.
Felicity Blunt is worriedthat this profile will be boring.
I speak to Blunt on Labor Day.
She is at home in London, where it is afternoon.
She is dressed casually in a blue sweatshirt.
Late summer light spills in through a window.
She is delightful and it makes people want to be delightful too.
Speaking to her, I want to be delightful.
I want to be forthcoming, kind, effusive, smart, and self-effacing.
[She] manages to make everything feel effortless.
Blunt and I speak aboutLessons in Chemistryas a way to begin discussing her career.
Blunt calls the runaway success of the book exceptionally unusual.
I mean I’ve had books go very big at auction, she says.
But this book went big in every market.
Agents were brought in to meet students and sample their work.
She was drawn to Garmus voice: On the first page, she made me laugh twice.
The book is an unconventional commercial hit.
For starters it is told from many distinct points of view, one of which is a dog.
I have 10 points of view, she says.
She never said that’s a bad idea.
I guarantee you, everybody else would have said that’s a bad idea…
The role of the modern agent is almost as the book’s initial editor.
Increasingly, publishers seek out the most finished manuscripts possible.
It’s an open secret that no one knows what exactly what will succeed.
Blunt and Garmus went back and forth many times gettingLessons in Chemistrythere.
There were some things that you know, we disagreed on, says Garmus.
But what I really loved about her was that she would listen to that.
And she would honor that and she gave me really good ideas.
And I said, I’m going to be ready.
Blunts list is made up of mostly women authors across genres, from thrillers to literary fiction to cookbooks.
I was like, I want that.
Blunt had read widely and without snobbery all her life.
She is the oldest of four siblings; Emily and Sebastian are actors, and Susannah is a veterinarian.
I think we’re all readers, she says.
My mum is a brilliant reader.
My dad loves a whole range of books as well.
They both are predominantly fiction readers.
We didn’t really read a lot of nonfiction growing up.
It was always novels that seemed to be around my house.
But books had not always been the planned trajectory.
Blunts father is a barrister and her original plan was to follow him into the law.
She mimes a horse spooking, locking its knees in refusal to move.
That makes me feel a bit nauseous, she says.
I fear being given things that aren’t earned because of that.
But the publishing industry does not always respond to fame in the expected ways.
It’s just an exercise in living off adrenaline, she says.
I think some days I manage and some days I don’t.
I’m just trying to fail upwards, she says.
Tucci says of Blunt: I consider myself very, very lucky to be married to her.
We met after I had experienced a great loss and she brought joy into my life and still does.
But they give a shot to balance it with time spent at home.
When you have kids, they don’t want you to go away.
It’s healthy to leave them occasionally.
It’s a good thing, she says.
But also, disruption doesn’t always feel great.
Family life at the Tucci/Blunt household is focused on the kids and on food.
We love our work and it occupies a great deal of our time, Tucci tells me.
Food is the thing that connects us to each other and the world.
On a typical night at home, the couple cooks together.
I made gnocchi the other night and then he made the sauce, says Blunt.
When it comes to eating, she says the children are not brilliant, but theyre not terrible.
Theyll eat steaks and ask for more blood, but then reject something like tomato sauce.
The reissue was Blunts idea.
So I reverted the rights, and we resold that one.
It was rereleased by Simon & Schuster in 2012 asThe Tucci Cookbook.
Two years later, they co-authored a follow-up calledThe Tucci Table.
And as an agent?
But I wish those in the past had all been as good as she is.
All of Blunts clientspraise her almost to excess.
Endorsing Blunt for a British Book Award, Jilly Cooper wrote, Felicity Blunt is well named.
Like the word Felicity she brings happiness to both clients and authors, particularly me.
But she is also blunt, but in the gentlest way.
(Blunt was shortlisted for literary agent of the year.)
Nina Stibbe writes, She is ambitious but realistic, tough but fair, and great fun when off-duty.
Emilia Hart writes, She is endlessly patient and has a remarkable editorial eye.
She tells me her ambitions are focused on her clients and the people in her orbit.
She wants her former assistant, now associate, to find her footing as an agent.
She wants her current assistant to advance.
She wants her TV project with Cooper to be a success.
I was laughing with my best friend, my oldest friend the other day, she says.
About the thing where you say if you were an animal, what would you be?
She is the one who has carved out a brilliant career for herself.
Her anxiety is unwarranted.
She is the one we all look to.
It goes back to what makes a book a hit.
Maybe theres a little magic involved, a little luck.
But in the end, it cant be faked.
