February 2022 Book, The Liar's Dictionary
Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday at 6:30. There is a choice of attending via zoom or coming to the Library. Dictionaries tend to be utilitarian, unglamorous things—pulled off of a shelf when needed, but otherwise gathering dust, especially as readers turn to digital resources. But in the preface of her debut novel, The Liar’s Dictionary , Eley Williams shrugs off that drab image, inviting readers through her spry language to imagine their own perfect dictionary and all the tangibles and intangibles it would possess. The structure of the book even mimics a dictionary, with a chapter for every letter of the alphabet, beginning with “A” for “artful” and “Z” for the tongue-twisting “zugzwang.” This invitation to see dictionaries as playgrounds and words as chewing gum sets a jovial yet cerebral tone that suits the stories of the two main characters, doubles living a century apart. In the modern day, Mallory is an intern at the struggling Swansby House, publisher o