When she crosses to womanhood,both the dictionary and Esme's father (who is uncomfortable at the word"menstruation") fail her for the first time."Not one of them could fully explain what had happened to me,"she says,after searching the Scriptorium for words and definitions to reflect her experience.
And so she gains an immersion education in womanhood,and in the process discovers more that is missing from the official record. Rather than rejecting her beloved dictionary,though,Esme assembles her own,rogue,Dictionary of Lost Words. But while the official dictionary requires quotations from publications that represent the middle and upper classes (and mostly men),Esme sources her words verbally,chiefly from Lizzie and the working women at the local market (including a retired prostitute who becomes a valued source).
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The women unrepresented by the dictionary are missing not due to deliberate exclusion,though. While the dictionary is biased,editor John Murray is Esme's lifelong champion and mentor,praising her as a"natural scholar"and pushing for her admission to the Bodleian Library,despite the impediments of gender and a lack of degree. This absorbing,quietly revolutionary novel shows that the problem is structural – and therefore,intractable.
While Esme's suffragette friends fight for women to be written into the structures that exclude them at society's highest levels,she surreptitiously works not only to record (and thus legitimise) women's experience,but to include those women the movement doesn't consider. (Making her a spiritual ally of today's intersectional feminists.)"Nothing I've said has ever been written down,"an awed Lizzie tells her.
InThe Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams combines the storytelling scale and intimate detail of a 19th-century novel with the sensibility of now – and a cast of richly realised characters and relationships that are a pleasure to spend time with.
And it has a rare quality that is,perhaps,especially valuable in this historical moment:it is deeply,intrinsically kind,without dipping into sentimentality. (There is conflict,but no villains. Even Esme's most infuriating antagonist is nuanced enough to glimpse another perspective at work.) In these times,that complicated kindness is a profoundly comforting place to dwell.