Take a photo of a barcode or cover
rkw25 's review for:
The Bookbinder
by Pip Williams
Pip Williams returns to the Press in Oxford, England, from 1914 with the beginning of WWI until 1920 with the granting (finally!) of degrees to women (who had previously graduated but not been degreed). Some of the characters from "The Dictionary of Lost Words" show up in minor and not so minor roles. The focus is on orphaned twins on the edge of adulthood from Jericho, the area where most of the press workers live. Peggy is curious and restless, longing for a Sommerville education, yet feels deeply her responsibility for Maude who has her own different, non-academically inclined gifts. Their family has worked in the Press for generations, and their mother now dead nurtured each girl's talents, bringing home scraps of damaged books for reading and storytelling, with smaller scraps for Maude to "fold" as origami.
Living on a narrow boat the girls are part of their community at work (since age 12) and on the river. Their mother had a friend (Tilda from "The Dictionary") who brings the outside world to them and then the war does--as men and boys from the Press go off, and refugees and wounded come into Oxford and the empty colleges. With its length the book has time to dig into the details of bookbinding, Town/Gown tensions, the physical and emotional losses of war on every side, the Spanish flu epidemic (now much more real to us than decades ago), autism and echolalia, being a twin, the suffrage movement, and striving for things that seem beyond your reach.
Both the twins are engaging characters. Peggy narrates, and we read her censored thoughts and her voiced ones; Maude has wisdom deeper than we realize at the beginning. The use of letters from Tilda as she serves as a volunteer, eventually in the midst of the war's hospitals, works well. The gifts of readings and books, friendship and our best selves, are all on display here. Thanks for such a wonderful read, Pip Williams!
Living on a narrow boat the girls are part of their community at work (since age 12) and on the river. Their mother had a friend (Tilda from "The Dictionary") who brings the outside world to them and then the war does--as men and boys from the Press go off, and refugees and wounded come into Oxford and the empty colleges. With its length the book has time to dig into the details of bookbinding, Town/Gown tensions, the physical and emotional losses of war on every side, the Spanish flu epidemic (now much more real to us than decades ago), autism and echolalia, being a twin, the suffrage movement, and striving for things that seem beyond your reach.
Both the twins are engaging characters. Peggy narrates, and we read her censored thoughts and her voiced ones; Maude has wisdom deeper than we realize at the beginning. The use of letters from Tilda as she serves as a volunteer, eventually in the midst of the war's hospitals, works well. The gifts of readings and books, friendship and our best selves, are all on display here. Thanks for such a wonderful read, Pip Williams!