‘The Liar’s Dictionary’ By Eley Williams c.2021, Doubleday $26/270 pages If you had told me that I’d be seduced by a novel obsessed with the dictionary, I’d have thought you were nuts.
I care about language and look up words when I don’t know their meaning. But getting hooked by a novel brimming with lexicographers and (real and fake) words?
Guess who’s eating her words? I’ve lost my heart to “The Liar’s Dictionary,” the first novel by British writer Eley Williams.
This is a queer book in so many ways. Williams, 33, who lives in London with her wife Nell Stevens, is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.