The Dictionary of Lost Words made me an instant fan of Pip Williams. The Bookbinder is another intriguing story. Once again set in Oxford, it is not a sequel but you will enjoy hearing from some of the past characters.

Fans of historical fiction, women fiction or just good storytelling, will enjoy this story of twin sisters working in a book bindery during WWI.

Thanks Ballantine Books and NetGalleyfor this advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

Readers of the Lost Dictionary of Words will enjoy this companion novel. Based during WWI, this story is about friends, loss and relationships during wartime. The bookbinding details are quite interesting. Peggy and Maude are a treat to get to know.

Pip Williams loves history I can tell because The Bookbinder is full of historical references but I also feel that Williams causes the book to become dry with bland characters and a lacking story.

I was provided a free advanced copy of this book from @netgalley in exchange for my honest review.
I read Pip William's first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, and while this one isn't a sequel the stories do overlap. It isn't necessary to have read the other first, although there is a spoiler for that one in this one.
This was a story about sisters, responsibilities, growing, and spreading your wings! It was a slower story, with the main focus being the characters themselves. Peggy is struggling after the death of her mother, and being stuck in the only job she knows while taking care of her twin sister. But as WWI starts, and new opportunities arise, Peggy has to learn to let go, accept help, and trust herself.
I struggled some with the pace of this, and honestly, the likability of Peggy. It was definitely a different time, and she was under so much stress and pressure, but it was a struggle at times to like her. I did appreciate her growth and liked her more at the end than the beginning. Ultimately the growth of all the characters, made this an enjoyable story! If it sounds like something you'd enjoy it is set to be published on Tuesday, 1 Aug.
#TheBookbinder #NetGalley

I had not read [b:The Dictionary of Lost Words|54531937], nor did I realize [b:The Bookbinder|63946934] was a companion to it when I requested it from Netgalley or even when I started reading it. So while I don’t <i>think</i> I’m missing anything by having only read the latter, I can’t be sure. (I am aware that a brief scene in the latter involves the titular Dictionary of woman’s words from the former, and its author is the main character from the former.)

[b:The Bookbinder|63946934] is the story of Peggy, a young woman who works at the bindery at the Oxford University Press, and dreams of someday attending the school instead. But she feels obligated to care for her twin sister Maude, who is a little strange and can’t be trusted to be left on her own. Things change for the bindery girls when the Great War breaks out and Britain’s men go off to fight a war on the continent, not least the influx of Belgian refugees and injured soldiers that are brought to Oxford. Among them Lotte, a quiet librarian who takes a liking to Maude, and Bastiaan, a badly injured soldier who Peggy meets when she volunteers to read to recuperating soldiers.

What follows is a tale of people learning to build bridges across class, gender, language and nationality. It can be quite difficult at times – though we barely see the war, except through letters from a family friend who is serving as a volunteer nurse in France – the war is very much present in Oxford through the brutal descriptions of the soldiers’ injuries, the shell shocked neighbor’s boy when he returns home to visit, the absolute horror the Belgian refugees carry with them every day. And later, the senseless devastation of a flu that killed indiscriminately. But there are opportunities, too – for women to fill in for some of the men’s roles at the press, for Peggy to get to meet Bastiaan.

I deeply enjoyed the detailed, loving descriptions of the process of making books in a time before automated printing. The precision of the folds, careful stitching, and delicate gilding of the soft leather cover. In a time when more and more people read on a screen (guilty!), it’s a love letter to the art of bookmaking - imagination made solid. Even so, I found the beginning a little slow, and it was only once the refugees and the plot began to pick up that I found myself getting pulled in.

[b:The Bookbinder|63946934] by [a:Pip Williams|15290215]
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
📖📚 I deeply felt Peggy’s compulsion to live surrounded by books
⛵️I would read a whole story about the boatmen and women
👩‍🎓 I feel like the fact that Oxford’s women didn’t actually earn degrees was in my brain somewhere, but it shocked me nonetheless
👭Maude’s condition is never entirely explained, but Williams does so much with it.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.</i>

4.5 out of 5 stars! A beautiful sibling to The Dictionary of Lost Words.

The Bookbinder gives a different view of the WWI chapters of The Dictionary of Lost Words. Sisters Peggy and Maud work in the book bindery in Oxford. While identical in appearance, Peggy is sharp and desires more from life while Maude's mind is locked in its childhood. As the war progresses, Peggy is able to improve herself, taking jobs normally reserved for men. The struggle of chasing your own dreams and letting opportunities pass to care for your family is something very close to my heart. It was wonderful watching it play out in literature.

Familiar characters such as Esme, Gareth, and Tilda crop up, looping us into the world of The Dictionary of Lost Words. I love watching the separate views touched on in The Dictionary, the suffragette movement, the Spanish Flu, and the position of women during the 19-teens.

I love Pip Williams's work, and how she utilizes words and phrasing to distinguish individuals' positions in the world. Also her research into the city building and professions of the time. The immersive effect is wonderful. The one complaint I have with Pip Williams's book is that the pacing is questionable. We spend a lot of time during one moment and then skip weeks for no explainable reason.

Thank you Netgalley and Ballantine Books for the e-arc of The Bookbinder in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Net Galley for allowing me to receive this book for an honest review.

I didn't realize when I saw this book it was the Companion book to Dictionary of Lost Words. I did read that book and enjoyed it. But I have to say I this one I lost interest. Probably because I am definately not a Historical Fiction reader. I tried to over look and found the author researched the history very well.
The characters and discription of things were relatable and if you enjoy historical fiction than definately give this one a try.

There are so many level of goodness that Pip Williams reaches in these pages.

Twins Peggy and Maude are working as bookbinders during the beginning of WWI.
Peggy is struggling with the responsibility she feels towards her sister and her dream of wanting more for herself, at least that’s what she is telling herself.

With a cast of side characters that could each be main characters we see Peggy discovering her true obstacle.

I fell in love with these characters. They are so well fleshed out and made a huge impact on my feelings for this book.

This book is a gift to book lovers, historical fiction fans and reviewers who scream “show me don’t tell me.”

This book was incredibly well written. It really made me sit back and reflect on intelligence and the chances handed to those who are of the "higher class" and the harsh lack of those chances given to those of the "lower class". In this book the author refers to them as the "gowns" and the "towns". The gowns refers to those able to enroll in higher learning.

The two main characters are twin girls, Peggy and Maude. They work at a book bindery where Peggy reads much of the books that she is binding. Maude may look just like Peggy, but she is "special". Peggy gave up schooling many years ago to stay with and take care of Maude. Now she regrets it and possibly resents it. She is given the chance to attend the women's college, but the result could separate her from all she is familiar with.

The book deals with those sentiments while taking us deeply into the happenings on the home front at England during WWI. There really are emotions and probing questions throughout the book. There are also insights into the thoughts and feelings of the war refugees who have arrived in England after watching the invasion and decimation of their homelands. Not only are the characters dealing with the war, but also the breakout of the Spanish Flu.

The Bookbinder woke up my brain at the same time it stirred my heart. A fantastic read!

Thanks to Random House Publishing--Ballantine and NetGalley for the gifted copy.

Courtesy of Random House and Netgalley, I received the ARC of The Bookbinder by Pip Williams. This WWI historical novel is set in Oxford, where the main characters work in bookbinding, live on a canal boat, and typically do not mix with the scholars of the university. In taking in Belgian refugees and wounded soldiers, their lives are changed and broadened. By giving a voice to the women of this era and emphasizing their knowledge of the value of literature, the author personalizes their journeys and changes. Beautifully written, highly recommend!

Another delicious book from Pip Williams! If you enjoyed The Dictionary of Lost Words, you'll want to read her latest. This is not a sequel, but a few friends from the previous book are mentioned.

Peggy and her twin sister Maude work as bookbinders. Peggy, however, would much rather be reading. The houseboat she lives on with Maude is full of rejects from the bindery. Her head is full of lines from books and she longs to attend the local university. Society and her need to care for her sister prevent her from believing in her dream.

The advent of World War I bring changes to her community and the bindery. New friends, romance with a Belgian soldier recovering from war wounds, and the chance to fulfill her dream brings hope as well as challenges for her future.

Though there is a romantic element in this book, female friendships play a major role. Also evident is the class system that hindered Peggy in obtaining the longed-for education. There is plenty of interesting history about WWI, which I find fascinating.

This is one of my favorite reads this year. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It is 1914, and as men in Britain are being called to fight, a train of refugees from Belgium arrives. The women are sent to work at the bindery, where twins Peggy and Maude work. One of the women on the train, Lotte, strikes up a friendship with Maude, and seems to understand her special needs. All of her life, Peggy has wanted nothing more than to go to university, learn, stretch her wings, and escape, but ever since their mother died, she has been in charge of taking care of Maude. Maude wants nothing more than to fold the pages, that is what she loves. When the call goes out for volunteers at the hospital to tend to wounded soldiers, read to them, and write letters for them, Peggy jumps at the chance. Lotte is more than happy to take care of Maude while Peggy works, and Peggy not only makes a new friend, but she falls in love with a Belgian soldier she is tending to. She has to decide how she can shape this new world around her responsibilities to Maude, without losing herself in the process.

This book was excellent. You could feel Peggy's yearning to learn, and her frustrations at being held back by her responsibilities coming off the pages. When Maude started wearing a pretty dress and hat all the time and saying she was a "pretty bird", you just knew that she had been taken advantage of by a soldier, who recognized she was mentally disabled. I did get frustrated with Peggy at times for how wishy-washy she was, and how self-sabotaging she tended to be. When Lotte's backstory came out, it broke my heart. It was interesting to read how the printing and bookbinding process worked, and how women and men were segregated in different parts doing entirely different jobs and the two never mixed. If you are a fan of historical fiction, then you are definitely going to want to check this one out. It is a long book, but it is certainly worth the read.

In The Bookbinder of Jericho, we return to Oxford just at the beginning of the First World War. It's an emotional and realistic story, it's noticeable that the author documented herself, it's a period in which many things happen, the most relevant to the story is the WWI, the suffrage movements, the work of women in the war period, Belgian refugees fleeing to England and the Spanish flu.

I like the characters, it's easy to empathize with them, Peggy and Maude are twins, and they work in bookbinding. Maude is comfortable and happy with her work, she doesn't need more (although they don't use the word because it didn't exist at the time) she is neurodivergent, most likely autistic. Instead, Peggy wants more than binding books, she seeks knowledge, to learn new things, and maybe one day to study at the university.

It's a story about endurance, ambition, strength, and adjusting to change. Peggy knows what she wants and that her dreams are not what is expected of her because she is a woman and her social class. The war gives her an opportunity, when men go to war women occupy new jobs.

It's the author's second novel, but something I like about her stories it's that you learn something, bindery seems fascinating and looks like a laborious and complicated job; plus I love the setting, Oxford is an old city, where knowledge it feels in the air.

It is a different story, the author wanted to give voice to forgotten characters and has a bit of everything: war, strong characters, family, friendship and loyalty, feminism, romance, literature, and love of knowledge.

Read it if:
Do you like fiction history
Do you want to know a little about the creation of books
The consequences of the war on women and refugees
An emotional, well-documented story where you will learn something new

✨New Review! ✨

The Bookbinder
By Pip Williams
Publishes: July 25, 2023
Genre: Historical fiction

This is a slower read, but quite enjoyable. It’s really about changing roles, relationships, and dreams. Especially during the world war 1 time period, but even just as we grow older, roles and relationships and dreams transform and are even lost. It’s an emotional read, because it brings to focus that everything is temporary and time is fleeting. Terrible and disappointing and unfair things happen in life and nobody is exempt, but most of these characters still manage to find some joy and keep dreaming of and working hard toward a fulfilling life. It’s also about having compassion and empathy for both strangers and friends in an often cruel, harsh world.
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Includes all this and more…
🕰️ historical timeline (1914-1920)
🇬🇧 British setting
🤕 WW1 - war trauma/effects
🪦 death and grief
📕 references/connections to
The Dictionary of Lost Words
(but not really a sequel)
📖 book making, bookish story, & literature references
📝 letters and correspondence
👩👧 central sister relationship
⛴️ houseboat
👭 supportive women friends/found family
💗 coming of age & first love
☝️ single female pov
💵 town vs. gown
🎓 value of education
🙋‍♀️ women’s suffrage

Thank you NetGalley & Penguin Random House!

Twenty-one-year-old Peggy Jones has a childlike twin sister, Maude, who often repeats sentences and phrases that she overhears. Nevertheless, with instruction and supervision, Maude is able to perform certain tasks well. Peggy and Maude work in the bindery of the Oxford University Press. Peggy gathers, folds, and sews pages that her male counterparts will bind and cover. Peggy resents the fact that she is forbidden to read the books that she handles (although she manages to circumvent this prohibition), and she longs to study and expand her horizons.

"The Bookbinder" is a poignant work of historical fiction that is set before, during, and after World War I. Pip Williams vividly captures the excitement of young Englishmen who are eager to serve their country. Little do they realize that they will soon be wallowing in filthy trenches, and many will return home maimed in body and soul. Peggy and Maude live on a small narrowboat, near their good friend, Rosie. Pip Williams's Peggy is bored, frustrated, and jealous of Gwen, a woman born to wealth, who attends Somerville College and, at times, seems to take her privileges for granted.

Williams conveys mood of a country on the brink of a war that might last a brief time or for years. Quite a few women will be recruited to replace the enlisted men at work, and others will volunteer to help out in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities. Once these ladies get a taste of independence, however, a number of them will be reluctant to resume their old routines. As time passes, Peggy realizes that Maude has become capable of caring for herself; romance can be intoxicating as well as constricting; and that with great effort, even someone from the working class can aspire to fulfill her dreams.

Pip Williams has followed up The Dictionary of Lost Words with another delightful and educational historical novel, and as an added plus, The Bookbinder includes nods to its predecessor. Again set at Oxford University Press, The Bookbinder focuses primarily on one of the bindery employees, 21-year-old Peggy Jones, who along with her neuro-diverse twin sister Maude, works in the folding department.

Just as readers learn about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary in The Dictionary of Lost Words as Esme also compiles her collection of “women’s words” omitted from the OED, The Bookbinder teaches about such processes as folding single printed sheets into multiple pages, trimming, hand stitching, and gilding the leather covers as Peggy works at the press, taking home defective books and book fragments, and wishing she could bridge the gap between “town” and “gown,” between Oxford Press worker and university student.

It is also a story of World War I, primarily on the home front. As the story opens, newspapers announce Britain’s 1914 entry into World War I, and men throughout Britain enlist to fight the Germans, including the son of Peggy and Maude’s neighbor’s son and many of the press employees. Tilda, a friend of the young women’s deceased mother, volunteers to assist with medical aid at the front, and Peggy volunteers in Oxford as reader and writer when wounded Belgian and British soldiers arrive and parts of the university are converted to hospital wards.
This is the story of books, strong women, war, Belgian refugees, and slowly changing social order. Readers should not miss Pip Williams’ notes in which she explains her inspiration for the book, her choices of book names for each of the novel’s five sections, and her use of several little-known historic figures as minor characters.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books/Random House for an advance reader copy of this excellent new historical novel from Pip Williams.

Shared on GoodReads and Barnes & Noble

I was excited to get an advanced copy of the Bookbinder given how much I loved The Dictionary of Lost Words. As a reader and lover of words that one just hit the spot.

The Bookbinder follows in the footsteps of The Dictionary of Lost Words, and is told from the perspective of Peggy, who works in the women’s wing of the bookbinders. There are some drops from the first book about Esme and her love, Gareth, but ultimately this could be read as a stand alone.

Give the bookbinder focus, there are pages and pages of detail about bookbinding, which I suppose is interesting, if you’re into that kind of thing, but otherwise it honestly did get a little wearing. I found the beginning to drag some with a pretty slow start.

I did appreciate the sisterly dynamic between Peggy and Maude, who seems to be neurodivergent. And things did kinda pick up after the first quarter. I also appreciated Peggy’s desire to read, learn and study.

But… overall this felt long and not as engaging as the first. The plot fell kinda flat and didn’t really keep me interested. I skimmed the last part. Overall recommend to those who love books and want to know more about the bookbinding process or those who enjoy stories set in the WWII backdrop.

This is a gem. Set in Oxford beginning in 1914, it's the story of Peggy, who left school at 12 to join her mother in the book bindery and who has always dreamt of being a student at the University. Now, though, her live is somehow smaller, as her mother has died and she's caring for her differently abled sister Maude, living in their narrowboat, and reading the manuscripts she folds. And then it all changes when WWI begins. A desire to help means a chance meeting with wealthy Sommerville student Gwen but equally importantly with Bastiaan, a seriously wounded Belgian who she spends months reading to. Williams captures how the bindery, Oxford, and Peggy changes as the War progresses not only through Peggy's eyes but also through the eyes of Tilda, her mother's best friend now working with the Red Cross in France (look for two mentions of Vera Britain). And Maude as well, especially thanks to Lotte, a Belgian refuge who refuses to discuss her past. WWI isn't the only horror here, there's also the Spanish flu, which comes home with the soldiers. No spoilers as to what happens to Peggy- readers should have the chance to come into this without preconceptions but know that they will both wipe a tear and smile. And do not miss the afterword. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. A great read.

I really enjoyed “The Dictionary of Lost Words”, so when I saw that Pip Williams was coming up with a new book, I didnt hesitate to request an ARC copy of it. Unfortunately this book was not for me, I couldn’t connect with Peggy, the protagonist and overall it was hard for me to engage with this book. Thank you NetGalley for giving me the opportunity of getting this advance copy.

I had to dnf this one after 3 separate attempts to get into the story. It has some of my buzzwords - twins, books, and WWI. I loved this author's previous book, so I had high hopes. Alas, the story is so incredibly slow and boring that it just didn't hold my interest. In my 3 attempts, I never made it past the 20% mark, and it took FOREVER to get there. Perhaps the story picks up later, but I don't have the patience to find out.