This book needed a better edit. The author tried to tie in too many threads and many of them were left dangling. I don‘t need resolution but many of the storylines felt like sketches rather than stories (E.g. MC mom, Tilda, tension in the suffragette movement).
The history of the dictionary and how words were vetted is so important and I wanted to love this book. Overall it read like a 3 hr movie that should have been 90-minutes.

Is it me or this a slow start. I really want to like this but it‘s not grabbing me (yet). I‘m spoiled by several amazing recent reads (Madeleine Miller, Natalie Haynes).

My next read is another sort of retelling. This time it‘s the non-fiction retelling of the lives of the five women killed by Jack the Ripper.

“But this is a women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn”

I loved this retelling as much as Circe and Song of Achilles. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Next up -
I‘ve heard Natalie Haynes on BBC and can‘t wait to read all of her books.

This is a difficult book to summarize as it is really genre defying. It is the story of two boys who meet in an orphanage. The plot is compelling, bizarre and full of shocking and fascinating content (e.g., self-mutilation, pet alligators and weird sex adventures).

Next up on my reading list. I‘ve enjoyed other Japanese writers, including H. Murakami (Wind Up Bird Chronicles). I‘ve heard this one has a slightly comic element.