I Did Not Lose My Review of 'The Dictionary of Lost Words' by Pip Wiliams

Jessica Grixti Stanley

Nov 30

Esme Nicoll is a six-year-old girl raised by her lexicographer father amidst the words and meanings of the Scriptorium, a shed where a group of men are in the slow process of defining what words are to be acceptable for the Oxford English Dictionary. One day, a word on a scrap of paper is dropped to the ground, forgotten, ignored. Bondmaid. Thus begins Esme's journey in adulthood, her love of collecting those words discarded to history, forgotten by history: the lost words.

So begins the plot of The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams' 2020 historical novel. A book I wouldn't have read if not for a book club I joined in a habit to read more, to read more widely, to jump out of my comfort zone and read new things. Too bad old habits die hard, and I read all 400 pages of this dense, literary fiction over the course of four days. Binge reading was easier for the last book club read, Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf, which was much shorter and easily binge read in a single day. Give me a looming deadline and I will read so much I will be at one with the page; I will be the page. No matter. I immersed myself into this story, determined to finish it, and became attached to these characters, to the story, to the words.