The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

For Esme, born to a mother she never knew, her world has always been surrounded by words.  While her father worked on the team creating the first Oxford English Dictionary, Esme sat quietly on the floor, unseen but hearing everything, gathering the small fallen slips of paper on which the magic of words was written and defined.  These slips of paper come to be Esme's constant companion as she grows up along with the Dictionary and comes to realize all the dictionary can do - but also its limitations.  And those limitations are, to Esme, unacceptable in their rejection and glossing over of the world of women.  So in her own way, Esme tries to gather those words, the words about women's experiences and bodies, the words that judge them and that comfort them and, ultimately, tell their stories.  

This book took a while to get into, I'll be honest.  But once I did, I cared so much about Esme.  I cared about ALL the women in Esme's world who had just as much a right to exist and have their histories recorded as do every single man or boy that worked on that dictionary.  By the end my heart was so full of emotion for what Esme tried to rectify - and I mourned, truly, the second-class status that women have held for so long, that makes the male perspectives and priorities the ones that have so much easier managed to endure.  As a LOVER of words and where they came from, as a lover of the POWER of words and what they mean to those to say them and those who listen, this book just came to me at the right time to be incredibly powerful.  I wanted to hug it when I was finished, I felt that much love for the gap it filled in my mind.  I loved it for the word "bondmaiden" and for the family that Esme creates around her as she learns and makes huge decisions as she finds her own way.

Loved it.