The Liar’s Dictionary
Split between the 19th century and present day, this is a delightfully exuberant, playful novel that is difficult to categorise or briefly summarise. Professor Gerolf Swansby embarked upon an ambitious project to produce his own comprehensive English language dictionary and encyclopaedia and set up premises in St James’s Square, London, towards the end of the 19th century. Peter Winceworth, a junior lexicographer in the late 1890s, works in Swansby’s large Scrivenery, tasked with defining words that begin with the letter ‘S’, which is a bit of joke upon him as he affects a lisp, making pronunciation a challenge in the office. Mundane office life with his fellow lexicographers bores Winceworth to distraction, and he feels side-lined and undervalued in his work. He thus decides to invent words, with meanings and definitions that are lacking in the English language. Affairs become more interesting when he meets Sophia, the engaging female companion of the office’s louche and wealthy Fresham, who seems to be there solely for his wealth and contacts.
In the present day, David Swansby is the sole surviving relative, and the project still slowly continues uncompleted. This part is narrated in the first person by the twenty-something female, Mallory, who is the only employee, a seemingly permanent intern. When David Swansby discovers during the long, drawn-out digitalisation process that some of the words in Swansby’s dictionary have indeed been invented, Mallory is given the task of going through all the many thousands of original card index entries to weed out the rogue words, in what was Winceworth’s recognisable handwriting. Thus both Winceworth and Mallory are joined over the years. Definitely a story for logophiles and historical fiction devotees. It is decidedly clever, indeed literary, but it is a fascinating read and strangely amusing and eccentric. The oddest, but one of the best novels I’ve read so far in 2020.
