The Liar's Dictionary

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 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 show more 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 Eley Williams, I could die happy, knowing I’d left the world a better place.

Delightful, delicious, daffy, dazzling– well, you get the idea. Readers who loved Mark Dunn’s ‘Ella Minnow Pea’ and Kory Stamper’s 'Word by Word’ will likewise devour ‘The Liar’s Dictionary’ with great relish.

There is a plot here – more or less. Two plots, to be precise, intertwining across a century and anchored by a never-quite-completed dictionary. One thread involves the purposeful insertion of mountweazels (look it up) and the other involves an attempt to locate and expunge them from the soon-to-be digitized version. There’s also a connecting thread of throwing off the traces of classism and conformity, and of having the courage to embrace one’s true self, along with a couple of love stories – one more show more successful than the other.

But let’s be honest here. This work is mostly an excuse to revel in words. Exquisite, exuberant, effervescent words, spilling off the page and snapping in the atmosphere like the bubbles from the finest Champagne. This reviewer begs the reader to not spoil the vintage by keeping a dictionary at hand. Just imbibe and enjoy. One might, via context, be able to puzzle out the meaning of mimolette, corymb, zugzwang, and pelike (and some in fact are presented gratis). If not, so what? It’s still a party in print, and it won’t even leave the reader with a hangover.

What more could one ask? show less

Creating a dictionary at the end of the 19th century was no easy task--dozens of workers toiled away, traveling and researching to write meticulous definitions on index cards they collected as they worked through all the words one letter at a time. In The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams, Peter Winceworth labors at Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, so bored with his job and life that he fabricates a lisp to provoke his co-workers as he tackles the letter S. He also enjoys making up words to counter the tedium (i.e. relectoblivious (adj.), accidentally rereading a phrase or line due to lack of focus or desire to finish) and secretly inserts them into the book. Flash forward to modern-day London, we find Mallory similarly show more toiling in boredom at the same Swansby’s trying to find all of Winceworth’s mountweazels (it’s a word...look it up) before her boss finally publishes Swansby’s online. The action moves back and forth between the two characters as they navigate their way through the dictionary and a strange few days of their lives.
The Liar’s Dictionary is about love, creativity, and finding yourself, but first and foremost it is an homage to words and the people who love them. Nearly every paragraph includes an interesting and obscure word, the characters (both modern and not) banter with funny references and pun-filled witticism and the action revolves around the words themselves. If wordplay, British humor, or the need to look up definitions every few minutes will make you crazy, then this may not be the book for you--but at a slim 200 pages, it may work for almost anyone. I adored every minute of it and highly recommend it. show less

In alternating chapters set nearly a century apart, two sets of loves are chronicled. The first involves Peter, a falsely lisping lexicographer working on the letter ’S’ for Swansby’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary, and Sophia, a free-spirited Russian distantly related to the Tsar. The other love is between Mallory, working a long-term internship to digitize Swansby’s unfinished dictionary and Mallory’s love, Pip, who works at a coffee shop, doodles on her digits, and, as opposed to Mallory, is fully forthright about being out. The chapters are organized alphabetically with either real or mountweazel definitions of words from the dictionary. It is a clever structure that offers up the opportunity for a series of sometimes comic, show more sometimes painfully sweet set-pieces.

So far, so charming, but does a larger narrative arc emerge? Eventually, perhaps, but the two storylines remain fully separated and only loosely parallel. However, just as you begin to think that it’s all just a bit of contrived fun (with added wordplay), you may find yourself actually caring about each of these characters in their separate stories. That took me by surprise. Perhaps romance trumps cynicism after all.

Gently recommended for word lovers and those who enjoy a sweet read that isn’t necessarily saccharine. show less

This book has two storylines: In the early twentieth century, a social outcast works for Swansby's Encyclopedic Dictionary, writing definitions for words while tolerating bullying from his coworkers. He falls in love with a coworker's fiancée, and Wodehouse-worthy hijinks ensue. Meanwhile, in the current day, a young woman gets an internship at the same dictionary, which was never finished and is a financial failure, so she and the owner are digitizing it as a last effort to keep it alive. In the process, they discover that the dictionary is full of fake words. The intern is madly in love with her girlfriend, but is also in the closet and struggling with her public identity.

Both storylines take place over a few chaotic days, giving the show more book a frenetic energy. Williams' writing is utterly brilliant - I literally laughed out loud in the preface. The book toys with language and words in delightful ways.

As much as I adored this book, and as much fun as I had reading it, the end didn't quite come together as neatly as I wanted it to. I wish the characters had been able to make the connection between the two storylines. show less

"I always disliked the expression sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. It is one of the least useful ways of understanding one another, or how words work."

A novel for people who love language and who perhaps experience a sensation of being on the outside of the human confraternity looking in. It is equal parts whimsical and profound, and split into alternating timelines centering on a late 19th century failed effort to create an encyclopedic dictionary a la the Oxford English Dictionary.

It is 1899 and Peter Winceworth has spent the past five years working on the letter S for the dictionary, scrivening and researching among 100 other lexicographers. A socially awkward and lonely man, he faked a lisp to win show more his interviewer's sympathy and get the job and has kept up the mask and shield since. He notes the gaps in the English language that mirror the gaps in his own life and invents words to fill them, such as when he thinks "there really should be a specific word associated with the effects of drinking an excess of alcohol. The headaches, the seething sense of paranoia - language seemed the poorer for not having one." [Google's ngram viewer shows "hangover" didn't come into notable use until around 1910, while Wiktionary points to 1904 for its first use in this sense].

It is also the current day and Mallory is the sole employee of the dictionary's inheritor, working on a project to digitize the never completed dictionary while updating definitions as appropriate. An anonymous caller makes daily threats, angry that the dictionary has redefined "marriage" following the resolution of the contemporary debate around that institution. She is in a long term relationship with her partner Pip but has not come out as a lesbian, holding up a mask and shield for her true self. She learns that many "mountweazels", or invented words, have been inserted amongst the legitimate words by someone originally working on the project, and she and Pip start working to ferret them out.

Winceworth has his world shaken up when a fellow lexicographer, who hails from the aristocracy and essentially funds the whole enterprise, returns from a year in Russia "researching" word origins with his new fiancee, Sophia Slivkovna, who is evidently engaged in a nebulous agenda of her own. Miss Slivkovna builds a sympathetic rapport with Winceworth, who feels so seen that he completely forgets to lisp when with her. As he falls for her in a hopeless infatuation, he becomes more disengaged from the dictionary's real project and into the creation of his own.

slivkovnion (n.), a daydream, briefly

Mammonsomniate (v.), to dream that money might make anything possible

The two storylines are brought to conclusions that lead the characters into opportunities to more fully realize their true selves, and to embrace those words that fully reflect themselves. Words, this novel argues, are powerful things, and we create them as we create ourselves. show less