the language of feminism

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: Esme received her introduction to language literally at the feet of the men putting together the Oxford English Dictionary.  Her father was one of them, and as a child, she would hide under their worktable and play with the word slips that fell to the ground.  She starts her own collection of forgotten slips, and begins to notice that many of them deal with things that refer only to women.  As she grows, she starts to deliberately seek out words that will never find there way into such a straight-laced piece of formality as the OED.  Collecting these "lost words" will prove an education in itself for Esme, one very different from what she receives in her formal schooling, or as she begins to work on the dictionary herself.

Esme is a believable and sympathetic character and her quest to have women's words, particularly those of the lower classes recognized is realistically written.  Any reader who's interested in the intersection of feminism and language will be intrigued by this book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

what's your point?

A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert
Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fiction, historical fiction
Review: I think I would have liked this book better if I'd known what the message was supposed to be. That successive generations are bound by an ancestor's acts, either to repeat it or react against it? Or the opposite, as seems to be what happens here: just because your mother/grandmother/great-grandmother/great-great-grandmother (as we move through the generations) starved herself in the name of suffrage, that has absolutely no bearing on your own tendency toward activism. As vignettes of the lives of 5 individual women, these stories are good, compellingly written, and all that. As a thesis, this book doesn't quite hold together.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.