Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

15 reviews

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

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.

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

zombiezami's review against another edition

emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

Truly beautiful and informative. Knocking off .25 stars because there were some threads of the narrative that felt a bit tacked on, from which I would have appreciated greater continuity. For example, I kept forgetting about

the protagonist's daughter because we would only be reminded of her every few chapters.

By contrast, in The Book Eaters, a book that felt very similar to this one thematically, you never forgot

that the protagonist had a daughter who was taken away from her.

It was a big, emotional plot point.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, and Sexism

Moderate: Grief, War, Death, Gore, Police brutality, Sexual content, Pregnancy, Blood, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Medical content, and Confinement

Minor: Slavery, Abortion, Child death, Infertility, Mental illness, Colonisation, and Rape

purplepenning'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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, War, and Classism

Moderate: Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Blood, Grief, Abortion, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Death, Mental illness, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Alcohol, Child abuse, Sexual content, Physical abuse, Cursing, and Forced institutionalization

katievallin's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad slow-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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Grief, Cursing, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Pregnancy, War, Classism, Death, Death of parent, and Violence

Minor: Abortion, Alcohol, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Blood, Car accident, Infertility, Medical content, Body shaming, and Sexual content

prettylightsandcitynights's review against another edition

Was reading for a book club which fell apart. Not my kind of book so I stopped reading. Was well-written, I just didn't get sucked in. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Moderate: Pregnancy and Sexism

Minor: Blood, Suicidal thoughts, and Death of parent

The book is set around the turn of the 20th century so there is obviously sexism and misogyny.

There is an unplanned pregnancy of a single woman. She gives the baby up for adoption and suffers post-partum depression.

eleanor029's review against another edition

emotional informative medium-paced

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

4.0

I like this book a lot. I could tell that the author did a lot of research and put a lot of effort into it. At times I lost my enthusiasm when the plot got slow, but in the end it was so worth it. Honestly, the last quarter of the book brought it all together and was the best part. I would totally recommend this to any language nerd. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Pregnancy

Minor: Sexism, Misogyny, Blood, Death, Abortion, Colonisation, and Classism

leannanecdote's review against another edition

hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Pregnancy, Cursing, War, Racial slurs, Blood, Violence, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Misogyny, Mental illness, Grief, Death of parent, and Classism

Moderate: Abortion

friendly_neighborhood_grandma's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

5.0

I loved this so much. This book follows the life of Esme Nicoll, and her connection yo words, people and especially women and their experiences. This book is incredibly detailed, canning and engrossing. I loved every minute of it. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in words and their direct and hidden meanings, and would like to feel what it's like to live in victorian times as an ordinary woman. Amazing book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Grief, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Sexism, Death, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Colonisation, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Ableism, Abandonment, Classism, Cursing, and Slavery

Minor: Infertility, Miscarriage, Suicidal thoughts, Fire/Fire injury, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Alcohol, Body horror, Police brutality, Sexual content, and Cursing