Unspeakable Beauty

by Georgia Carys Williams

Growing up in a lonely house on the edge of a wild common, Violet Hart is a quiet and sheltered only child who has always dreamt of becoming something a ballet icon as famous as Margot Fonteyn. 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 when a secret, all-consuming affair with her older lover Theo threatens to send her world into a tailspin, will Violet find herself? Or will she succumb to the silence she knows so well?

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2024

About the author

Georgia Carys Williams was born in Swansea. She won third

prize at the Terry Hetherington Award 2012, highly commended

for The South Wales Short Story Competition 2012, was

shortlisted for the Swansea Life Young Writing Category of the

Dylan Thomas Prize, 2008 and for the Wells Festival of

Literature 2009. Whilst working on a PhD in Creative Writing at

Swansea University, she writes for Wales Arts Review and was

commissioned by the Rhys David Trust to contribute to WAR’s

fictional map of Wales series. Most recently, she was shortlisted

for New Welsh Review’s Flash in the Pen competition, published

in Parthian’s Rarebit Anthology and awarded third prize in the

Terry Hetherington Award 2014. Her debut short story collection,

Second-hand Rain was published by Parthian in October 2014.

Reviews

[Andrew H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unspeakable Beauty is a disturbingly ambiguous title. From one perspective it suggests the abhorrent Theodore Gamble who grooms the novel’s youthful narrator, Violet Hart. A different perspective appears, however, if the phrase is read as connoting the ineffable. Here, it expresses the mystical connection between dance and a world beyond language — a line recently pursued by J.M.Coetzee in The Schooldays of Jesus. It is dance (as ballet) that offers Violet a sane world in which she can exist as an individual. Unspeakable Beauty, Georgia Carys Williams’ debut novel, is a novel about a double, intertwined relationship: how our dreams and our loves can shape us and erase us.

Unspeakable Beauty is billed as “an unsettling coming-of-age-tale.” It is, however, a long way from what this reductive term would usually imply: a story filled with raw emotion and limited in ideas because the world is seen through the eyes of an undeveloped consciousness. Unspeakable Beauty has ideas, though these are subtly subsumed into poetical writing and a world of stories and allusion. In trying to analyse dance as a form, Susanne K. Langer focused on its “mythic consciousness”. This element is very much to the forefront in the novel. Violet Hart is a person without a voice, an Ophelia strewing violets, in mourning for a loved parent. In Violet’s case this is her mother whose heart suddenly stops and shakes the Hart family at its core. Violet is also an abused Ophelia, a teenager who falls under the spell of Theodore Gamble (a terrible grand jeté in the dark) and finds herself violated by him — physically, mentally, and spiritually.

The ominous phrase that changes Violet’s world from girlhood to adulthood is Theodore Gamble’s “don’t think, feel.” This is a re-statement of Isadora’s Duncan’s aesthetic. Emotion exists above reason: art draws freely upon life’s unchained emotions. Throughout Unspeakable Beauty, Georgia Carys Williams carefully tracks Violet’s felt world, a private, introverted place that shifts between education and seduction. Education is a “leading out” of the self. It can, however, easily shift into seduction, a “leading aside,” if the wrong power structures are used. In Unspeakable Beauty, the author probes education expertly, observing how Violet is constantly not heard: teacher, therapist, counsellor, and doctor, all fail to hear Violet’s concerns and give her the voice she desperately seeks. The doctor who “was all for time management” offers anti-depressants and leaves Quiet Violet alone in her world of silence. The author also investigates schooling through the false education provided by Violet’s abuser. He prises apart what is the root of dance and the root of human self-awareness — thought-feeling. There are no genuine feelings without thoughts and vice versa. Ultimately, it will be the wise training, provided by the sensible Ms Madeline, which keeps Violet “alight” and not wanting “the flame to go out.”

The beauty of the writing in Unspeakable Beauty rests with its psychic images. As Violet deals with Theodore Gamble, she becomes Eve/Lilith, Odette/Odile, Virgin/Hetaira: a seventeen-year-old contending with an older shape-shifting, demonic figure, who sweeps through literature as Archimago, Comus, Satan, Svengali, Von Rothbart in Swan Lake and Dr Coppélius in Coppélia. There is a mature level of intelligence in the crafting of Unspeakable Beauty that lifts it above yet another coming-of age-story.

Unspeakable Beauty is a modern Bildungsroman that is deeply relevant to modern life and its temptations, a world that favours brevity, emojis, and consumption, and has little time for hearing gentle voices in the dark. This is a novel where the author is always listening to her central character and urging the reader to listen too. Violet Hart is alive on the page. She is someone with whom the author clearly empathises and has lived and breathed. Unspeakable Beauty is a finely choreographed novel. Where else could the story end but at The Mercury Theatre? Mercury, in classical mythology, was always the rightful leader of the dancing Graces and director of dreams.

[Genevieve Helene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This pulled me in from the first page. It was an addictive read. The depiction of Theo's grooming of Violet was very cleverly done. He drew her into his control using her vulnerability and eroded her sense of self. Unnerving, disturbing, and so beautifully written. This was given to me as a gift, and I am very pleased to have been introduced to this author's work. She was not on my radar at all. I will be keeping my fingers crossed that she writes a second novel.

[Georgia_C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a wonderfully written book, it really made me feel.

This follows a girl called Violet who dreams of becoming a top class ballerina.

This read isn’t for the faint of heart, as she falls in love with a much older man, who grooms her. There are many dark themes in the book, and Theodore is an absolute bastard.

I also felt frustrated with Violet and her father at times, just wanting to shake them. However, my lord do you root for her.

I will definitely be looking out for future novels by this author, but I’m off to read something a bit cheerier for now!

[Pippy Beaven · Rating 3 out of 5]

absolutely killer first page, incredible opening line, really convincing characters and a beautiful setting. the writing at times is really immersive especially in its depiction of the power imbalanced relationship between violet and theo, and the depiction of grief at the loss of parent was really really beautiful. however a few bones to pick: 1. the ending felt unfortunately rushed, as if everything was tied up in a nice pretty bow far too quickly and sort of disregarded the sexual violence and trauma that she had encountered only pages before 2. this felt like a novel of 2 parts, part 1 dead mother and part 2 being groomed and i don’t think the first part informed the second part at all. i wish the second part could have shown the real impacts of her grief rather than dancing around it (no pun intended) and talking more about ballet than the loss of her mother. 3. i wish it had been 50 pages shorter

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

FNA

[Alice King · Rating 4 out of 5]

So unbelievably beautifully written.