The Liar's Dictionary: A winner of the 2021 Betty Trask Awards

The Liar’s Dictionary is the first novel by British author, Eley Williams. In the final years of the nineteenth century, Peter Winceworth relieves the boredom of his work as a lexicographer on Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary by fabricating his own words and definitions for things he believes need one: certain feelings, sensations, emotions, acts, concepts, qualities that are, heretofore, not succinctly expressed. Peter isn’t nearly as passionate about his work as some of his colleagues, and they tend to ignore him, if not treat him with contempt. But then someone comes along who seems to hear him, and within forty-eight hours, events have driven him to insert his words, neatly written on the regulation blue index cards, into the pigeonholes that hold the dictionary’s entries. Over a hundred years later, David Swansby shares what he believes to be a potentially explosive secret with his young intern, Mallory. When he’s not distracted by playing historical online chess games, he is preparing the only published edition of Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary (1930, incomplete due to loss of lexicographers to World War One) for digitisation, so it can be made available free online. Editors often add what is known as a mountweazel to protect copyright, but what David has stumbled across is clearly not that: there are too many of them. He sets Mallory the task, in between answering bomb-threat phone calls, of tracking them down from the original blue index cards, because the dictionary, online, in its current form, would be a laughing stock. Although winnowing out the false words is tedious, it’s certainly more interesting work than what she’s been doing so far: who can fail to be fascinated by the mind that creates words like: “cassiculation (n.), sensation of walking into spider silk, diaphanous unseen webs, etc” and “asinidorose (n.), to emit the smell of a burning donkey” and “agrupt (adj.), irritation caused by having a dénouement ruined”. Mallory’s flatmate (and lover, though she’s still vacillating about going public), Pip is concerned about the bomb threats, so comes to Swansby House. She observes “‘Once you start knowing there are made-up things in here, this whole dictionary is just a – I don’t know what to call it…. An index of paranoia.” It’s a good thing Pip has chosen to help… The twin narratives are presented in alternating chapters, each titled with a letter and pertinent word (F is for fabrication), forming a story that likely goes where the reader will not be expecting. Less of the wordy preface and more of the fabricated words would have improved the overall experience. This is a novel that will probably appeal to those of a linguistic bent, but it doesn’t quite deliver emotionally. Eley Williams is an author to watch. This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Random House UK.