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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Peggy and Maude are twins, and look exactly alike but otherwise could not be more different. Both twins work in the bindery. Peggy wants to “read the books, not bloody bind them.” Maude is content to fold day after day.
Pip Williams knows how to weave together a story. This is only her second novel. In it she leaves Easter eggs from her first. The connections between the characters are deep and well written. The plot moves you forward. I loved her inclusion of Peggy’s thoughts and then her actual responses. I know someone like her (maybe really well) and this one detail alone would have been enough, but Williams makes her distinctive. The character arcs are solid. And the history of book binding is fun.
I like so much about this novel. Obviously the prevalence of books, the sister dynamic, found family, value based characters are a hit for me. The parallels between Maude’s repetition and repeating patterns for treatment of women were interesting. I also really like the connections to her previous novel The Dictionary of Lost Words. Esme and Garth show up in this second novel. Williams is a solid read for me and I look forward to reading more of her work as she releases her third book and beyond.
Quotes:
“When a privilege is unfairly denied, Tilda liked to say, then it must be taken.”
“… we didn’t hate each other as much as we’d thought. We just hadn’t known each other very well before the war.”
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
reflective
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
emotional
informative
inspiring
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
I didn’t rate this as highly as Dictionary of Lost Words as it took awhile to engage, and initially the plot seemed to drag but I did enjoy the latter half more than the first. Nevertheless this is another well-researched piece of historical fiction with a feminist theme. It’s the story of twin sisters, Peggy and Maude who work as bindery girls (as did their mother before them) at Clarendon Press in Oxford during WWI. Their beloved mother died several years before when the girls were only 17 and they muddle along living onboard a tiny, ramshackle canal boat filled with books and pages of books that sate Peggy’s obsession for the written word. She is a young woman constricted by the era in which she lives, her social station in life and her need to care and protect her twin who is different from the norm. Peggy would dearly love to become a scholar and the book largely deals with achieving this ambition against all odds. All this is set against the backdrop of circumstances both at home and in Europe over the years of the First World War and the ensuing influenza pandemic.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
Important historical novel set in Oxford and Jericho, England, during WWI. Centers the lives of women in a time of war. While it directly addresses issues of socioeconomic class and gender, sadly it does not attempt to deal with issues of race or sexual or gender identity. TW: war, violence, sexual violence, death, mental illness, PTSD, dismemberment, disease, suicide.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Strong character development:
Yes