Review of The Dictionary of Lost Words

 The Dictionary of Lost Words

Author: Pip Williams

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Publication Date: April 2021

Pip Williams has not only given us an entire book full of words, but provoked us into thinking about them too. Words allow us to create common understanding of ideas and perspectives. Yet the choice, application, and even meaning of words can be an intensely personal experience. This rather lovely paradox underpins the setting, plot, and individual character arcs of The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Born in the late 19th century, Esme Nicoll grows up under the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary - literally. Dr. James Murray and several lexicographers, Esme’s “Da” among them, spend their days around a table in their Scriptorium sorting, defining, and approving words brought to them on slips of paper, while Esme entertains herself underneath the table. One day, a slip falls down into her lap and seemed to be missed by no one. She claims it as her own. Forgotten slips become her secret treasures, defining her as the dictionary defines the world around her. As she grows and her role in the Scriptorium is allowed to become one of consequence, it becomes clear that the men of the Dictionary exclude words of women and common folk, thereby invalidating their thoughts and experiences. In the time of suffragette protests and The First World War, Esme’s quiet, self-appointed purpose of protecting disregarded words and memories guides her journey as a woman and a person. Along with the lost words she rescues, Esme must lose, find, and define herself.

Esme’s guarded behavior and suppressed opinions suit the time she is written into. However, her emotions are still understandable and empathetically accessible to her modern audience. Like the women of her time and the words with which she spends her days, Esme is defined by others but also struggling to validate her own sense of meaning. Our relationship with language is a symbiotic one; words are our creation, and we are continually defining them, but they also have the power to influence and shape our perceptions. Esme’s effort to define herself becomes the emotional gravity of the story - which is why the epilogue is ultimately unable to engage and fully satisfy. There is a recurring sense in the story of characters and ideas oddly truncated even as they are developing. Nonetheless, the story and the author’s protagonist are fully engaging conceptions.

Historical fiction writers walk a fine line between conveying enough historical context to accurately enrich a story but not so much that the narrative is overburdened. Williams capably inhabits this historical fiction “Goldilocks zone”, making sure the historical context is all deeply pertinent and personal to her characters. She also navigates the difficult task of increasing the social and political context of her story as the time it takes place in and its characters evolve. This story impresses upon us that the act of defining is itself a paradox - both essential and perpetually subject to change and imperfection. The story itself has that same feeling of both worthiness and imperfection. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a beautifully conceived journey about the reciprocal nature of words - how meaning is something we both define and discover.

- D. K. Nuray