Dee Cee

This book is written superbly. The way the dictionary is formed and how each entry’s scrutiny through bunching into fascicles, being edited and approved of before being accepted in the dictionary gives life to the otherwise inert words that Esme collects for herself. The entries which are discarded from the higher echelons, slip and fall and are collected by Esme, and secreted with the help of her ‘bondmaid’. As the words are revealed from Esme’s pockets, so are the characters and the plot revealed. For a first book by an author The Dictionary of Lost Words is a journey through a woman’s development pre- and during the suffrage movement. I would recommend it to anyone interested in social history of that time.