Telling her own story, she maintains an often pragmatic stance, reflecting the gnawing isolation and emotional separation that she felt as a child. Astonishingly, there is little bitterness here: Williams’s writing is accomplished — pacey yet carefully spare, so that sadness and anger hover over her narrative rather than suffocate it. Such is the vividness of her characters and dialogue that, having unburdened herself, Williams now might choose — with the promise of some success — to turn her back on her day job as a journalist and find a powerful new voice by making the leap into fiction.