In her debut novel, Hattie Williams draws on twelve years inside the publishing industry to reveal its glittering friendships, hidden hierarchies, and the tangled affair that sits at the heart of Bitter Sweet.
Dear Reader,
Before I wrote Bitter Sweet, which is my debut novel, I worked in publishing. This is not unusual, these days, there are plenty of us that have made the leap. It was a career that spanned twelve years. I started out at Pan Macmillan, quite by accident; an admin temping job became an assistant position. I was often The Gruffalo, because I was the exact right height to wear the costume. I graduated from mascot to publicist, working at a few agencies, before finding myself at one of The Big Five, where I stayed for close to ten years. I worked in publicity, marketing, brand and eventually editorial. Publishing was my life. It was, for a while, my entire identity.
It was a complicated relationship. Publishing can be wonderful; there are many beautiful, kind people working in publishing. It is how I met some of my best friends.
But it can also be hard. Publishing often masquerades as being a cutesy, villagey enterprise run on kindness and tea and a twee love of books. But it is a brutal business. Thousands of books are published every year. Only a handful really cut through. It is ruthless.
When I resolved that I would, finally, make a really committed attempt at writing a novel, I decided that I would write a story set in publishing. I had left my in-house job by this point, and I was exhausted by it. But here was this beast that I knew inside out. I had made a few poor attempts at writing a novel before this, and they had all failed spectacularly, because I was trying to be a writer that I am not. It was at this point that I gave myself permission to be myself on the page, and to write in my own voice.
In Bitter Sweet, which is set for the most part in 2010, you will find a lot of love and nostalgia for publishing. One of the most joyous parts of working in publishing is the friends I have made, especially those I met in the early days, in the assistant trenches where the hours are long, the work is at worst boring, and at best completely nuts. There was a lot of room-temperature prosecco and M&S cheese straws. Many wonderful nights were spent at launch parties Goldsboro, with afters at neighbouring pubs. It was almost cultish, our love and commitment to the work and the books and all that came with it. I loved writing about these friendships, and the messiness and chaos that so many of us experienced in those strange days where you are no longer an adolescent, but equally, a way off being anything truly adult.
In contrast to this, at the heart of the novel, is the relationship between our narrator Charlie, who is 23 and a publicity assistant, and Richard Aveling, the married, 56-year-old author that has defined his generation. The book follows their affair over the course of a year and explores the power dynamics between them, which is governed by control and silence. It is also a book about books and writing and creativity and what ‘celebrity’ means in this very temperamental industry.
The truth of it is that affairs like this happen, and they happen a lot. Not just in publishing, but in all workplaces. And they are never straightforward. I wanted to explore what a relationship like this might feel like from the inside. I wanted to understand what would need to happen to a person to get caught up in such a relationship, and how they might recover when it ends.
Because it always ends.
Bitter Sweet is ultimately a hopeful story. Like the title, it is about contradictions and polarities. I very much hope that you enjoy reading it.
-Hattie Williams
