Georgina Moore discusses her début novel The Garnett Girls, inspiration and finding time to write

I have sat down with Georgina Moore numerous times over the years to talk about books. Now deputy m.d. of Midas PR, and before that publicity director at Headline (a position she rose to at the tender age of 29), she is one of a select few publicists with wide influence, generous in her praise of writers beyond her own impressive roster. She has worked with numerous bestselling authors—among them Penny Vincenzi, Maggie O’Farrell and Hilary Clinton—but today, chatty and expansive as ever, she is here to talk about her own début novel The Garnett Girls when we meet at a private members’ club in Soho. We should probably be drinking negronis in the spirit of the novel, but settle instead for Earl Grey.

Set mostly on the Isle of Wight, The Garnett Girls tells of three sisters—Rachel, Imogen and Sasha Garnett—and their glamorous, impossible mother Margo. When the girls were young, their father Richard left the family home. They grew up hearing about their parents’ epic love affair, but not knowing why he abandoned them. Now as adults making their way in the world, they are pulled back by the past and the mystery surrounding their father. Rachel, the eldest, has taken over the crumbling family home, Sandcove, even though she would rather be living in London. Imogen, a successful playwright, feels under pressure to settle down in her thirties and please her mother. And baby of the family Sasha is obsessed with their absent father. “You get stuck in a role in a family,” observes Moore, and the novel is strong on the sibling dynamic.

It felt quite nice to be doing something just for me

Moore remembers first attempting to write a novel around 15 years ago, but soon abandoned it: “It was a really fun girl-about-town novel, but I just didn’t know how I would make it different from any other girl-about-town novel.” The seed for The Garnett Girls was sown when her family acquired a holiday houseboat in the Isle of Wight and she fell in love with the island and its close-knit community. But she was a busy woman with two nearly teenage children and a demanding job, which required lots of socialising, “and I’m not, as you know, very good at being the first to leave the party. If I’m out, I’m out!”

Then lockdown happened and although Moore was one of the first publicists to pivot a campaign entirely online, when a 37-event tour was abruptly cancelled (for Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet), it did mean she had more time. 

With no events to arrange or attend, she found her evenings and early mornings were free to write and soon discovered that her novel became the escape she needed to get through “everything else”—the pandemic, home-schooling and life turning on its head. “I’ve given a lot of my energy and real, proper love to the authors I’ve worked with… so it felt quite nice to be doing something just for me.”

Somebody told me that The Garnett Girls was ‘escapist but not sentimental’

She didn’t ask any of the authors she has worked with for writing advice, but perhaps years of sitting in events listening to them speak about their craft left an impression. Her chief literary inspiration was The Camomile Lawn, with its “slightly posh people behaving badly”, but also its author, Mary Wesley. “She had no fear, Mary Wesley, about writing older women who were sexy and that was one of things I really wanted to do with Margo…in a way Margo is almost a tribute to Mary Wesley herself.” She also drew on Rosamunde Pilcher’s beloved The Shell Seekers “for the sense of place”.

A tandem career

As one of the best-connected people in publishing, when it came to finding representation Moore had no need to thumb through a copy of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. The manuscript went out to a few carefully selected agents but one showed particular enthusiasm. “Cath [Summerhayes] rang me from the bath saying, ‘Have you said yes to anyone? I really want to sign you up.’” HQ swooped in to pre-empt and it will be one of the imprint’s “biggest fiction débuts for 2023”.