Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

115 reviews

sari_lyr'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
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Sexism, Pregnancy, War, Abandonment, and Misogyny

Moderate: Infertility and Abortion

hematthews's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective tense medium-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

4.25

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Cursing, Abortion, and Blood

Minor: Car accident

writingbugtop's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad slow-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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy, Death of parent, War, Violence, Misogyny, Mental illness, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, and Death

ashlynmae311's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

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

4.5

This book helped me understand my own experience as a woman so much more deeply. She puts words to my own struggles, sorrows, and joys in a truly unique and inspired way.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pregnancy

Moderate: Death, War, and Sexism

Minor: Death of parent and Abortion

A woman gives up her baby to another family

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

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

Minor: Alcohol, Slavery, Racism, Fatphobia, Fire/Fire injury, 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.

stonemaker's review against another edition

hopeful inspiring sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pregnancy

orlagal's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Grief, Death of parent, Ableism, Blood, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Sexual content, War, Body horror, Cursing, Violence, Pregnancy, Slavery, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, and Mental illness

etbishop's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: War and Pregnancy

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

Minor: Car accident

vbsauce's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pregnancy, Sexism, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Death, War, Grief, Mental illness, and Suicidal thoughts