Eley Williams

When I decided to read the shortlist for the Republic of Consciousness prize, this was the book I was most looking forward to, partly because it was mentioned in a few of the papers' best of the year lists at the end of last year. It did not disappoint me at all - Eley Williams is clearly a talented writer, and this playful, quirky collection is a pleasure to read.

In general, I find short story collections very difficult to review - I don't like the story by story dissection as a form, and I show more often struggle to identify themes. This time what struck me most was her love of words, her sense of humour, and her juxtaposition of ideas, coupled with a knowledge of the limitations of language - many of the stories are addressed to a departed lover. She also delights in exploring words in a way that reminded me of Ali Smith, who is one of my favourite writers.

A fine collection which I can't do justice to - so read it yourself! I look forward to seeing where she goes next. show less

Playful, funny, touching, tender, a logophile’s delight. Poetry, puns, and double-entendres, often all at once. So many of these short, short stories are about breakups that overall, despite their playfulness, the tone is of wistful, aching sadness. The penultimate story, “Spines,” broke my heart.

This is a charming book full of special words and wordplay about an attempt to update and digitize a dictionary. Swansby's multivolume Encyclopaedic Dictionary was originally compiled in the late 19th century, but has been dormant since it was abandoned in the 1930's. Now David Swansby, a descendant of the original compiler, has hired Mallory to assist with the update. The chapters alternate between the present, as narrated by Mallory, and the 1890's, told from the point of view of Peter show more Winceworth who is working on the letter "S" for the dictionary.
In the present, Mallory is tasked with searching out "montweazels," which are imaginary words inserted into dictionaries. This is done for copyright protection reasons, and there are usually only one or two monweazels inserted in a dictionary. Here, however, David Swansby has discovered there are many, many more such false entries in the Swansby Dictionary. There is also a subplot involving bomb threats.
In Peter Winceworth's time, we learn that he is a Walter Mitty-sort--overlooked, ignored, and sometimes ridiculed by his colleagues, though he is actually very smart. He takes his revenge by inserting the false entries:

"He sketched these idle thoughts on borrowed notepaper whenever the mood took him: sometimes inspired by interactions with his colleagues in the Scivenery--biefoldian (n.), an annoying fellow; titpalcat (n.), a welcome distraction. Sometimes he just improvised little fictions in the style of an encyclopaedic entry. To this end he made up some fourteenth century dignitaries from Constantinople and a small religious sect living in the volcanic Japanese Alps. More often than not, however, these false entries allowed him to plug a lexical gap, create a word for a sensation or a reality where no other word in current circulation seemed to fit the bill."

I didn't look up every strange word I came across in this book, but of those I did some were real and some appeared to be made up. All of the wordplay, not the plot, is the point of this book, and I imagine the author had great fun making up a lot of these words, and discovering the unusual words that are real.

Recommended
3 1/2 stars show less

A logophile’s delight, and also a charming love story with endearing characters. Two awkward misfits, one in the past and one in the present, whose stories overlap as they work at Swansby House on Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, discover what’s important in life. I’m glad I read this as an ebook because I could easily look up words in the online dictionary and, especially, google the mountweazels, which constitute the heart of the story.

The preface is perfection. If I were show more Eley Williams, I could die happy, knowing I’d left the world a better place. show less