I enjoyed The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020) so much that I pounced with glee on this “companion” novel, published earlier this year. It features some of the same characters and we’re still in Oxford.
Peggy Jones, who narrates, lives with her twin sister Maude, on a narrow boat on the canal and works in the Oxford University Press bindery where Maude, who is neuro-divergent and speaks mostly in echoes, has a remarkable talent for folding. Their much missed late mother, also a “bindery girl” was, we infer, in a relationship with Tilda a suffragist who remains a close “relation” to Peggy and Maude and writes wonderfully graphic letters from Belgium when she goes off to be a VAD alongside Vera Brittain. Yes, this is a novel which quite often features real people. I enjoyed “meeting” Mr Horace Hart of Hart’s Rules fame too.
Once the war starts in 1914, most of the men and boys enlist. Then carnage in Belgium leads to the arrival of Belgian refugees as well as British casualties. Peggy volunteers to help at the hospitals in Oxford which is how she meets, and eventually falls in love with Bastiaan, a character who delights.
This is not, however, a straightforward love story in the conventional sense. Rather, it’s a book about books, information, education, loss and inequality. Peggy yearns to read the books she’s folding or stitching and like her mother before her she collects the discarded sections from work and brings them home so that the main room on her boat is lined with books or sections of them. Maude catalogues their boat library. Across the road from the bindery is Somerville College where privileged young women, like Gwen who becomes a good friend, are entitled to study. But Peggy, desperately hungry for learning, is barred – or is she? Could there be a way? I’ll spare you the spoilers.
There is a great deal to reflect on in this meaty, multi-layered novel. At the simplest level it’s immaculately and admirably researched although Pip Williams, who lives in Austrailia, has visited Oxford just three times. From her detailed account I learned a lot about traditional book making. As I often say, people who read fiction soak up extraneous information unconsciously. It’s a bonus side-effect that we greedy readers enjoy.
I also liked the way Williams weaves the futility of war in with the Suffragist movement and the frustration of someone in Peggy’s position. Even when the vote is granted to (some) women in 1918, she’s still excluded because she’s under 30 and not a householder. Williams paints the whole town/gown divide (which still exists) accurately too.
The characterisation is interesting. The librarian at Somerville Colleg is a case study in enlightened thinking and kindness. So, in a completely different way, is Mrs Stoddard, Peggy’s supervisor at the Bindery. She may be firm, and with a job to do, but she’s also empathetic. Then there’s Maude who depends on Peggy. Or is it the other way round? Maude is gradually revealed as being more capable and less needy than Peggy assumes and should, perhaps, be allowed a life of her own as witnessed by her intense friendship with the troubled Belgian, Lotte.
Then there’s the depiction of life on the canal – by coincidence this is the second book I’ve read in the last fortnight in which the main characters live on boats. (See last week’s Ashore by Penelope Fitzgerald). Here we get a strong sense of community with the family “next door” as close friends, worried about Jack who’s in France and lovingly looking after a very elderly mother. Pip Williams has a knack of making it all both human and humane.
At the heart of this enchanting and moving novel lies a homage to books. And that, of course, gets my vote.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing
