I did go into the book feeling like the luckiest for having an ARC to read. I was also completely conscious of the fact that I LOVED The Dictionary..I was expecting to come away a little anti climatic. But instead I’m a bigger Pip Williams fan. That was beautiful!!!!!!!!!!! There is so much going on in this novel; the exploration of knowledge and who has access to it. The idea that ‘the Brontes and Jane Austen were far from rich..but lived in houses where one woman cooked their meals and another made their beds’..it also brilliantly put me into oxford 1915 with Belgium refugees flooding in and the hospitals full of soldiers who have ‘barely kept their heads’…the themes running through The Bookbinder are so engrossing, but the characters are just so enjoyable..Peggy and Maud, Tilda, Lotte, Gwen and Bastiaan I think will be lifelong friends of mine, I know them so well. A captivating story so masterfully told.
This is a beautiful companion to The Dictionary. I could not have loved it more. I really think it will make the most perfect hissy fic bookclub novel; there is so much to talk through!
