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 of an encyclopedic dictionary known not for prestige, but, as one character notes, “for not being finished. Having mistakes and being a bit eccentric.” As it turns out, the dictionary contains even more errors than the public may realize. During the digitization process, the head of Swansby discovers, to his horror, that there are an unknown number of fake entries—or mountweazels, normally intended to catch plagiarists in the act—that are not supposed to be there. It’s Mallory’s job to weed out these bogus words.

 The Liar’s Dictionary is a terrific reminder of just how fun words can be, and how powerful they become in showing the world—and reminding ourselves—precisely who we are.

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