Book #96 of 2021:
The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
This story starts off on the wrong foot — taking the first 4% to wax rhapsodic about the soul of dictionaries before we even meet a single character — and somehow grows worse from there. It’s a split timeline, with one lexicographer protagonist in Victorian times inventing words to sneak into the volume he works for (whilst inexplicably faking a lisp), and the other in the modern day tasked with rooting out those false entries for the latest edition. Neither has any great motivation for any of their actions, nor any particular stakes in the event of failure. Then hardly anything happens, a few would-be twists land with a thud, and in the end, nothing really gets resolved and the two halves of the narrative never intersect on any meaningful level of plot or theme.
Sometimes I can tell that a book is not a good fit for me right away, but still spot some potential and carry on in the hopes that I’ll settle into it as I go. In this case, I’m a bona fide word nerd who loves archaic and obscure etymologies and thinks a novel built around a hunt for mountweazels could be fun! But my optimism is dashed at every turn by the execution here, turning what might have been merely a subpar reading experience into a frankly disastrous one.
[Content warning for bomb threats and homophobia.]
★☆☆☆☆
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