THE LIAR'S DICTIONARY

Steampunk meets philology in a century-hopping debut novel.

A pair of budding lexicographers working on the same dictionary, one at the end of the 19th century and the other at the beginning of the 21st, alternate chapters and narratives in this confection of love and language. Winceworth, a neurotic young editor with an affected lisp, is working on the S section of Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, then a flourishing enterprise. Meanwhile, more than a century later, Mallory takes an internship at what’s left of the dictionary: cases of blue index cards covered with definitions housed in a magnificent, crumbling Victorian building on a prime block of London. In between their eras, World War I stopped the dictionary in its tracks, sending the young workers off to the trenches and melting down the printing presses for ammunition; the entries for Z remain unfinished. In her half of the novel, Mallory performs the disturbing twin assignments of fielding threatening phone calls and hunting down “mountweazels”—made-up words deliberately inserted into the dictionary. In his half, Winceworth broods over office politics and invents the words that Mallory is rooting out. Williams, a charming stylist, is at her best when she’s writing breathlessly about the blossoming of romantic love: Mallory’s for her girlfriend and Winceworth’s for a colleague’s fiancee. Plentiful events—explosions, trysts, betrayals—give the impression of a lively plot, though key mysteries remain unresolved, particularly in Winceworth’s narrative. (What is the real identity of the mysterious beauty? What is the bully’s motive?) Surprisingly, the least exciting aspect of the novel is the vocabulary words, many of which word mavens may well already have encountered in listicles of, for example, color terms or names for body parts (glabella, philtrum, pons). Nevertheless, people who read dictionaries for fun will likely enjoy the selection.

A sweet and diverting story, witty and sincere, from a promising newcomer.