The Liar’s Dictionary: Lacking definition

The Liar’s Dictionary

Author: Eley Williams

ISBN-13: 9781785152047

Publisher: William Heinemann

Guideline Price: £14.99

In the beginning was the word, and the lexicographer searched for the etymology of the word. For those who begin to find the component words as fascinating as the information they combine to form, there are dictionaries and the opportunity they afford to trace the formation of each word (from Proto-Germanic wurda- (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian word, Dutch woord, Old High German, German wort, Old Norse orð, Gothic waurd).

This obsession with the origins of language is central to Eley Williams’s first novel and becomes, for protagonist Peter Winceworth, a mechanism not only to locate accurate meanings for the dictionary he is helping to create but also to discover an opportunity to create new words for those aspects of life that lack precise definition. In The Liar’s Dictionary, there is, of course, a name for the creation of such words: “Mountweazels.”

As his name suggests, Winceworth is quite an ineffectual character, a man who drinks too much and is barely noticed by his colleagues at Swansby’s Publishing Inc as they each work on a letter of the alphabet for the forthcoming New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, which will after publication become known chiefly for being incomplete.

What won’t be immediately obvious to early readers is the number of invented words Winceworth has managed to include, having achieved a moment of revelation at the end of a particularly difficult day. “The thought became clear and clean: just some small strokes of pen to transfer these doodled drafts onto the blue index cards and he could pepper the dictionary with false entries. Thousands of them – popped in like cuckoos-in-the-nest or changeling children or easily overlooked mistakes.”

Abilities Winceworth lacks in his own unsatisfactory life can be rectified by creating new realms of experience. “He could be in control of a whole universe of new meanings, private triumphs and soaring new truths.”

‘Ghost words’

Winceworth was employed by Swansby’s at the end of the 19th century but it is only in the present day that a young woman called Mallory has begun a concerted attempt to find all of the mountweazels. She is an intern at the never-great publishing house, working for David Swansby, the last in line to attempt to keep the dictionary alive, determined, it seems, to pursue the pointless task of making the contents available digitally, as if many other, better online dictionaries were not already available.

It is only when Mallory’s partner, Pip, becomes as fascinated as she is by the “ghost words” that Swansby’s lack of commitment to this project becomes alarmingly clear.

The essence of a person is, he learns, much more elusive than the clear definitions that are possible for words, even invented ones

The mutually enriching relationship between Mallory and Pip is in notable contrast to the deficient life of Winceworth more than 100 years before. He is infatuated with Sophia, the fiancee of a brashly over-confident co-worker called Frasham. She toys with Winceworth in ways that allow him to dream, so that for a time he does not realise the extent to which she is free enough to delimit her own boundaries of behaviour.

The essence of a person, Winceworth learns, is much more elusive than the clear definitions that are possible for words, even invented ones and no attempt to envision his preferred version of Sophia will square with her distinct reality.

Claustrophobic feeling

It is a pity that we don’t learn more about Winceworth’s life outside of his workplace and the company of his fellow lexicographers. The claustrophobic feeling evoked when Mallory is accosted by David Swansby in a “stationa/ery cupboard” never quite leaves the novel, key episodes of which take place in confined spaces; Winceworth’s first meeting with Sophia takes place in the “arboreal verdancy” of a potted plant, in the corner of a room where a party is being held).

The result is a certain sluggishness in some parts of the novel and a feeling that – disappointingly, in a work so concerned with vocabulary – not enough use is being made of the infinite possibilities offered by words, especially invented words. Only in a passage in which Winceworth is fading into woozy half-sleep on a park bench are we allowed to escape the humdrum details of a life constrained by language:

“The best benchside exoticism January could offer were all on show – the starling , the dandelion, the blown seeds and the birds skeining against the grey clouds, hazing it and mazing it, a featherlight kaleidoscope noon-damp and knowing the sky was never truly grey, just filled with a thousand years of birds’ paths, and wishful seeds, a bird-seed sky as something meddled and ripe and wish-hot.”