Sunny's Bookshop | Sunny's Journal | Hattie Williams Interview — *Photograph of Hattie Williams by Phil Sharp*

Hattie Williams makes her debut with an exploration of power dynamics: in Bitter Sweet, protagonist Charlie is a 23-year-old publicity assistant at a publishing company who begins an affair with a much older, married, famous author, Richard Aveling. The already skewed power dynamics between the two is further heightened by the fact that Richard has always been Charlie’s favorite author – and his work was introduced to Charlie by her late mother before she died. Immediately drawn to the real life version of the man she has long idolized, the affair quickly becomes all consuming for Charlie. Even as Richard shows his condescending nature and a refusal to leave his wife, Charlie continues to dive head first into the doomed love affair – and must grapple with the consequences as the circumstance spirals out of control.

Through Charlie’s story, Williams explores grief, vulnerability, and the different kinds of love with thoughtfulness and precision. Even as Charlie makes bad decisions and the inevitable end of the relationship creeps closer, you can’t help but continue reading – and hoping that it will all somehow work out for Charlie, who, at her core, simply wants to be loved.

Below is my conversation with Hattie about finding believability in “unlikeable” characters, and finding inspiration from music and television, and more.

Sunny's Bookshop | Interview with Hattie Williams | Bitter Sweet by Hattie Williams | book

Nikki: How did you know that you wanted to be a writer?

Hattie: I think I have always known, but it took a long time to find the right story, and the confidence and focus to write a novel. I remember a pivotal moment when I was talking with Bernardino Evaristo at an Icelandic literary festival that I used to direct. Bernie told me that as a writer, she crafts detailed back stories in her imagination for people around her, all the time. I do the same, I always have. Something clicked. I must be a writer too, I thought. It gave me the push I needed.

Nikki: How did you come up with the idea for Bitter Sweet?

Hattie: The first scene, where Charlie and Richard meet for the first time smoking in the rain, struck light lightning. The rest of the story very quickly followed, unrolling like a carpet in front of me. I honestly don’t know where it came from (creativity is elusive and mysterious!) but I think working in publishing, and giving myself a setting to write that I knew, made it happen.

Nikki: The story of the affair between a married older man and a younger woman is basically a tale as old as time. I am often drawn to these stories – I find them fascinating and am not even quite sure why. What about this dynamic was interesting to you? What made you want to explore it?

Hattie: I am too! But I don’t think I wrote deliberately about an age gap. At the time, I had never been in any kind of age gap relationship. I did write very deliberately about a power imbalance, and coercion and control and a young woman overcoming trauma and what that looks like in the context of a sexual relationship. I think love is elemental and endless and shapeshifting and different with every person we experience it with, which is why we keep coming back to these stories. But it was power disparity that drew me to Charlie and Richard; age was just a part of their story.

Nikki: There are a lot of power dynamics at play here. Not only is there the age difference, but the fact that Richard is a famous author – someone whose work Charlie has a close personal tie to, given that she was introduced to his work by her beloved late mother. Then, of course, they work together – in a dynamic where Richard has much more power and is considered much more important. How did you develop the right level of skewed power dynamics? Did you ever wonder if you were taking it too far, or not far enough?

Sunny's Bookshop | Hattie Williams Interview with Sunny's Journal

Hattie: I always ask myself the question when I’m writing: is this believable? It was so important for me that the reader would understand why Charlie makes the decisions she does. She is at times infuriating and you want to shake her, because she is unable to make the decision that is often so clear to us as the reader. But haven’t we all been guilty of that, of ignoring red flags, of falling headfirst when we want something that we know is probably impossible to hold onto? As in life, Charlie doesn’t always do the right thing, she doesn’t protect herself, she runs headfirst into trouble because she is motivated by an innate need to belong, and to be loved. There are multiple layers to Charlie and Richard’s power play – for example, Charlie feels very powerful when it comes to sex. In fact, I’d say that this is the only place she feels she has any power in her life. So how she uses it had to be interesting, and real, and that is where Richard’s age becomes important because he is attracted to this young woman, and Charlie’s self-esteem is so low that she considers this the one thing she has over him.

Nikki: Charlie makes a lot of frustrating choices and can be quite naive at times. This, of course, makes her a complex, well developed character – ones whose actions reflect those that real people have and will make. Yet, there are bound to be people online who deem her “too unlikeable.” Did this occur to you at all while writing the book and did it affect the writing process at all?

Hattie: Yes. I find a lot of female protagonists in books of this ilk to be extremely annoying and cold, making bad decisions we don’t understand. Charlie makes a lot of bad decisions, but I hope I have shown enough of why she makes the choices she does, so that we can sympathize and understand her. I love Charlie deeply, for all her faults. I feel a protectiveness towards her because she has had such a terrible time of it. Not everyone else will feel that, or like her. I think you have to accept that, as a writer, you can’t please everyone, and that not everyone will be able to relate to your characters and writing. You should never let that stop you from writing the book you want to write, and the book that feels most authentic to you.

Nikki: Richard is quite “unlikeable” too. He often talks down to her, can be quite cold, strings her along heartlessly, and even steals her idea for the ending to his book without giving her any credit. What was the process for crafting Richard as a character? I’m specifically wondering how you went about making him likeable enough that it’s believable that Charlie would be this infatuated while also showcasing the ways in which he is simply a bad guy in many ways.

Hattie: Richard is horrible isn’t he! He is so coercive, unkind, manipulative – he is, really, a villain. But I needed to show his appeal to show how Charlie got drawn in by him, so those moments where he is seemingly kind and soft with her are very important. I also wanted to draw two very different men; the Richard on show as the famous writer, and the Richard that exists in the confines of his apartment, where he spends so much time with Charlie. I had to be careful not to judge him as I was writing him, or he would have been two dimensional. The one thing that really changed in the edit was making him less physically repulsive.

Nikki: In what ways was Richard “physically repulsive”? What was your thought process behind originally writing him that way?

Hattie: I think I just overdid it a bit with the gross descriptions, taking it further than intended. So I pulled it back a bit! A good editor/editors is a real gift and they offered some very sensitive guidance to help me get this right on the page.

Nikki: Charlie’s friendships with Ophelia and Eddy – especially Ophelia – is a major cornerstone of the novel. What did you want to convey about the importance of friendships?

Hattie: I loved Ophelia and Eddy – they were such a joy to write. I wanted to write about the beauty and chaos and intensity of friendships in your early twenties, especially those formed at work in the ‘assistant trenches’ where the hours are long, the work is quite mad, and the financial reward is pitiful. I also wanted to write good and kind friendships, and for the reader to be surprised by these characters – it is easy to judge them on the surface. I’m all about breaking expectations, and writing people that feel very real, and I hope I have managed that with Bitter Sweet.

Nikki: This novel deals with a lot of heavy topics – such as grief and sexual assault – in a way that I found to be handled with both care and authority. How did you decide that the story about the older-man-younger-woman affair was also the right space for these other important themes?

Hattie: Thank you for your kind words! I think that these are themes I will always revisit; that is love, grief, mental health, toxic relationships, trauma. I don’t think that I have ever really approached a book or a piece of writing with such consideration as space vs themes. I just write the characters and stories that come to me, that feel the most authentic and real, and then try to do them justice and write with as much nuance and integrity as I can. If stuff later feels uncomfortable or ‘off’, or I feel that I am not doing a subject justice, I will then pull that stuff out in the edit.

Nikki: Which books or authors, if any, acted as inspiration for Bitter Sweet? Which authors do you most admire, in general?

Hattie: For writing about women and trauma I adore Donna Tartt, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lauren Groff, Sally Rooney, Coco Mellors, Meg Mason, Louise Kennedy, Saskia Vogel. Max Porter is one of my favourite living writers, and the way he writes about grief and masculinity and childhood is second to none (except maybe Ted Hughes). I also admire him for his activism and how he seems to be setting an example for the role artists can play in this very volatile world. I love the humanity and playfulness of Kurt Vonnegut, Halldór Laxness, Iris Murdoch and Nora Ephron, I love the wisdom of Joan Didion and Marian Keyes. I am a product of everything I read, but my writing is more influenced by music and TV and film than by other writing.

Nikki: I love that you’re inspired by other mediums too! Could you share some examples of music, TV shows, or films that inspired Bitter Sweet?

Hattie: I actually have a Spotify playlist for Charlie that I made while I was writing the book that you can listen to here. It has lots of songs that feel like Bitter Sweet but also fit Charlie’s era. I also listened to a lot of Max Richter, Philip Glass and The National while I was writing the book; all big, emotional artists with sweeping soundscapes, heavily influenced by literature. The National singer Matt Berninger’s lyrics probably influence my prose more than anyone else, in any medium. In terms of shows that inspired the book there is certainly something of Lena Dunham’s Girls – in retrospect, especially the episode, “American Bitch!” I am always trying to capture the essence of grief in the way that Damon Lindelof does in the show, The Leftovers, so that certainly influenced the book.

Nikki: What did your writing process look like for Bitter Sweet? Has it changed since?

Hattie: I wrote my first draft in seven weeks, and I did the same for my second novel Beginning. Middle End. Once I have a story and an outline in my head, I find writing very fluid and I write intensively for 7-10 hours a day to get it down on the page. Then I leave it for two months and work on something else – I am writing a lot for screen as well as Substack – and then I begin the reread and the edit, which is far more painful than the first draft. Now I am in the full swing of PR and promotion for Bitter Sweet, I have had to park my third book, which I am halfway through, because it is too distracting to be doing multiple things at once. When I am in that first draft, I need to be in it fully.

Nikki: What contemporary books have you read lately and loved?

Hattie: I have just got back from LA where I read the most beautiful, sexy California novel by Saskia Vogel called Permission. Jenny Godfrey’s The List of Suspicious Things is wonderful and has been such a huge hit here in the UK. I’m just dipping into Emily Slapper’s new book It Might Never Happen, and I had an early proof of Miriam Robinson’s And Notre Dame Is Burning which really blew me away!

Nikki: What are you working on next? What other themes and ideas are you hoping to explore?

Hattie: I am working on so much! A few projects for screen, but also my third novel, which will explore a love triangle in which one of the parties is dead, and the complexity of the impact of that grief. It will also look at a brand-new marriage in direct juxtaposition to a mature marriage, the theatre and creativity, and of course, a load of trauma and deep female sadness.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.