‘Without believable characters, a good story is meaningless’
Author Georgia Carys Williams speaks to Ian Lewis about her new novel Unspeakable Beauty
WRITER and poet Georgia Carys Williams has published her debut novel.
Unspeakable Beauty arrives a decade after her first book Second-hand Rain, which was a collection of short stories – often dark, offbeat and brimming with poetic unease.
That was widely praised and shortlisted for the Sabotage Short Story Award, longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and longlisted for the Frank O’connor International Prize.
Swansea-born Georgia has a doctorate in creative writing from Swansea University and is also a member of the Hay Festival Writers at Work alumni.
Unspeakable Beauty is a fictional, psychological coming-of-age novel tackling themes of loss, loneliness, toxic love, ambition, the female experience and desire.
Set on the South Wales coast, it takes inspiration from both the cityscape of Swansea and the sweeping Gower peninsula, the contrast between the two locations playing a part in the book’s themes.
Its central character is Violet Hart, growing up in a lonely house on the edge of a wild common, a quiet and sheltered only child who has always dreamt of becoming something extraordinary – a ballet icon as famous as one of her heroes.
Guarding her dream closely after suffering catastrophic loss, Violet falls further into quietness, learning to speak only with her feet as she pursues a path to a career in dance. On the cusp of adulthood, she finally starts to find her voice. But a secret, all-consuming affair with her older lover Theo threatens to send her world into a tailspin.
This beautiful, poetic debut novel warns of the dangers of being a quiet person in a loud world and letting magnetic strangers pull your strings. Set on the Welsh coast, Unspeakable
Beauty is an unsettling tale about the importance of learning how to take the lead and be yourself, of finding hope in the shadows, of letting your dreams bloom.
Speaking about the book, Georgia said using the city and the Gower as springs of inspiration made sense to her and was a logical process for the story.
She said: “Unspeakable Beauty is set in a fictionalised, fabricated South Wales location on the Welsh coast, inevitably inspired by the Gower and Swansea landscape, there was no reason for it not to be. That decision felt natural to me. Violet Hart’s home is positioned between the city and the sea, the loudness and the quietness, the built-up elements of the town and the calmer, more primitive nature. This was a convenient parallel with my protagonist – Violet’s personality – her introversion and the world where everything ‘happens.’ The coast and the common landscape of the Gower happened to provide the perfect place for a character who loves to look out and dream of becoming something more.”
Looking broadly at how her home city has shaped her writing over the years, Georgia said: “I’ve lived in Swansea since I was born. I attended both schools and university here, so it was only natural that I would work and build a home here too. It’s difficult to say how a place has shaped your writing when that place is so much a part of your identity. I do know that when I began to take writing more seriously as a student, I became aware of the flourishing literary community across Swansea and South Wales in general, and being around so many talented artists definitely fuelled me to continue on the creative path, until I graduated with a PHD in creative writing and for a while, taught adult evening classes in the same subject. After that, I moved into a marketing role alongside advancing my writing career.”
Asked how approaching her first novel differed from past works, her short stories and poems, Georgia said it was something she felt the need to learn more about before tackling, explaining: “Writing a novel was always something I wanted to do but I needed to learn a lot more about the craft before I tackled it. I remember writing short stories for fun when I was around five or six years old, before the more angsty poetry of my teenage years. In retrospect, without knowing it, I was probably working around smaller spaces as a way of finding my voice, exploring different themes, and experimenting with writing styles. Some of my stories later formed my debut collection, Second-hand Rain, which was published by Parthian books.”
Upon setting to work and plotting the path for Unspeakable Beauty, Georgia said: “At first, I approached my novel in a very similar way to my story writing, creating what were more like vignettes than chapters, and feeling the need to gradually tie up loose ends more than was necessary for long-fiction. Soon, I realised I needed to think bigger, allow myself to have less control over each line and be less afraid of writing into the emptiness. So, I took the leap and wrote a whole draft in longhand using the ‘freewriting’ technique, where you write, at pace, whatever comes to mind, letting your subconscious draw all those fun ideas to the surface. And it was definitely freeing!”
She added: “Of course, the editing after that is the real work, when you become meticulous again. One thing I’ve learnt from all the fiction I’ve written so far is that without believable characters, a good story is meaningless, so when it came to my debut novel, Unspeakable Beauty, my central protagonist, Violet Hart, is its absolute foundation.”
Turning to her own hopes of what she wanted to achieve with the book and what the reader can gain from it, Georgia said: “One of the novel’s central themes is how being a quiet person in a loud world can be dangerous. It can leave you too open to others speaking on your behalf and it can trap you in scenarios you would rather not be in. However, the book is mainly for anyone who has a dream. I can’t know exactly what impact it will have but I hope that as readers follow Violet’s journey, it will inspire those with their own internal battles to hold on to their ambition. It’s a book to promote strength, hope and perseverance but also to provide some relatability for some of life’s turbulent themes such as loss and those uninvited feelings of worthlessness. At the very least, I hope people find the book to be good company.”
With Unspeakable Beauty having only hit the shelves a few weeks ago, Georgia is already looking to the future. She added: “I’m working on a few creative projects right now. Each one is at a different stage and following a different process. I’ve started my next novel, which has more of a structured outline than last time; I’ve very recently started writing a children’s book, I’ve mapped out a young adult novel, and I have a poetry collection to return to. Who knows which one will be the first to cross the finish line? These next few weeks, I know I’ll mainly be enjoying celebrating the launch of Unspeakable Beauty.”