Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

19 reviews

aesarctic's review against another edition

informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Sexism, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Classism

Moderate: Infertility, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Blood, Abortion, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Miscarriage and Car accident

beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words is one of the most meaningful, thought-provoking novels I have ever read, and yet there were parts of it that I struggled with.

As the title suggests, this is a book about words, more specifically those words that are not considered important enough to be compiled into the first-ever edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Since the task of compiling the OED is largely left to older white men, inevitably their ingrained biases ensure that the dictionary is skewed towards a male view of the world, and this is writ large when it comes to the male attitude to women.

In the year 1901, one of the OED's loyal fans discovered that the word "bondmaid" was missing from the dictionary. It is from this factual nugget that Pip Williams has constructed the fictional character and heroine of the novel, Esme Nicoll. The story of the novel is the story of Esme's life,  covering  late Victorian-era Great Britain to the First World War. 

The novel was written almost entirely (

aside from the last two chapters

) from Esme's POV, and this was where I had the most difficulty. Even though I could see Williams had crafted Esme with great care, and I (mostly) liked and sympathised with her, she seemed passive in many ways and I struggled to truly understand her motivations and feelings. 

In terms of other characters, I most liked Harry, Esme's widowed father, Edith "Ditte" Thompson, Esme's mentor and mother figure, and Lizzie, a serving maid at  Murray household where Esme spends her childhood and whom Esme eventually

develops a close bond with

.

I also had some issues with the novel's structure and pacing, which seemed uneven to me. Even though the beginning of each chapter stated the year and the month in which it was set, the time jumps could be hours, days, weeks, or even months at a time. These jumps were not always consistent, leaving me confused as to just how much time had passed between the beginning and end of a chapter. It kind of felt a bit lumpy.

Ultimately, it was the themes of this novel that I most strongly resonated with - the way certain words were defined to degrade not only by gender but by social status, the way words could come to mean more than one thing, the development of slang and curse words, and most poignantly, the inadequacy of words to describe the human experience. 

This is a novel that, to me, asks two fundamental questions: Whose words matter? And almost more importantly, who gets to decide?

A moving, thought-provoking read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Misogyny, Sexism, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Blood, and Colonisation

Minor: Fatphobia, Racism, Slavery, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Sexual harassment

This novel takes place during the rise of the first wave of feminism in the early 20th century. It includes a discussion and descriptions of

imprisoned suffragettes going on hunger strikes and being forcibly fed by prison staff

. There are also some pretty graphic descriptions of the carnage during the First World War, not only those experienced by soldiers fighting on the Western Front but there is also a graphic description of

the brutal murders of Belgian babies by German soldiers, who then went on to rape and mutilate these babies' mothers.

waytoomanybooks's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The premise of the book is what initially drew my attention and captured my interest. As someone who was once a curious, inquisitive girl with a love of books and a large vocabulary, I fell in love with Esme and her work. (I’m now an adult with the same love of books and a hunger for information.) That being said, the book loses steam about halfway through, which is why it took me a while to finish it. Nothing was happening, narratively or emotionally, with the characters, so I lost interest. The final third of the novel truly drags, and the author seems to have lost steam because

she pretty much kills everyone off and makes a sixty year time jump with little context

. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not a strongly written one either. I would suggest that you only read as far as page 247 (the chapter titled December 1912). It drops off after that.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Car accident

zombiezami's review against another edition

emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Truly beautiful and informative. Knocking off .25 stars because there were some threads of the narrative that felt a bit tacked on, from which I would have appreciated greater continuity. For example, I kept forgetting about

the protagonist's daughter because we would only be reminded of her every few chapters.

By contrast, in The Book Eaters, a book that felt very similar to this one thematically, you never forgot

that the protagonist had a daughter who was taken away from her.

It was a big, emotional plot point.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Misogyny, Sexism, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Confinement, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and War

Minor: Child death, Infertility, Mental illness, Rape, Slavery, Abortion, and Colonisation

purplepenning's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, War, and Classism

Moderate: Death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child abuse, Cursing, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, and Alcohol

katievallin's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Sexism, Grief, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Death, Violence, Death of parent, Pregnancy, War, and Classism

Minor: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Infertility, Misogyny, Sexual content, Blood, Medical content, Car accident, Abortion, and Alcohol

gondorgirl's review against another edition

emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

sargasso_c's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, and War

Moderate: Cursing, Misogyny, Sexism, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Classism

Minor: Car accident and Injury/Injury detail

thumbeleia's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Car accident, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Infertility, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Sexual content, Abandonment, and Alcohol

savvyrosereads's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Rating: 4/5 stars

Esme is the daughter of a lexicographer working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. But as she grows older and more familiar with her father’s work, Esme begins to realize the words of women and the working class are left out of the OED—and begins to collect them for herself, instead.

This was the November pick for a book club I’m part of and I was so excited because the premise sounded incredible—feminist historical fiction about the importance of words and the way the language we hear and preserve impacts our view of the world? Sign me up immediately!

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like this one lived up to the promise of that premise quite as well as it could have. I found myself repeatedly frustrated by large time jumps and unresolved plot points, and was ultimately pretty frustrated by an ending that felt a bit haphazard. I wanted to be drawn into this book and this world, but I instead found myself a somewhat bored observer of vignettes that sometimes felt almost random, disconnected from the larger narrative for no discernible plot-serving reason.

Still, at the end of the day the concept is spectacular and I felt like the message the book sends has real value—and did make me cry multiple times. If you decide to pick this one up, know that you’re in for fairly slow historical fiction—but if you are a word nerd you will probably enjoy most of the ride.

Recommended to anyone, but especially if you like: feminist historical fiction; words and linguistics; fiction with a message

CW: Pregnancy/post partum depression; death/death of a parent; war/PTSD/injury.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Death of parent, and War

Moderate: Cursing, Misogyny, Sexism, Medical content, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism