I wanted to like this one so much. From the blurb I read, there was a lot of potential. It just didn't pan out for me. I'm a huge book lover, but even I was dying of boredom through the excruciatingly detailed descriptions of how the pages of books were folded in the binding process. Notice I said descriptions . . . plural. I got it the first time. I gave up after the fifth time the process was recounted. I just cannot go on.

I chose to pick this up because of the title. The story builds slowly but soon you find yourself pulled into life in Oxford during the first world war and the lives of women working in the bookbinders, specifically twin sisters Peggy and Maude. They are the town as opposed to the gowns—and Peggy wants nothing more than the opportunity to attend college but feels herself bound to care for and protect her sister. You feel the sameness of every day folding pages for new books while trying to read the bits and pieces you can glimpse. Everything changes when refugees from Belgium arrive, and she makes a friend with a woman attending college. It is a story of life during that time but also a story of Peggy’s journey to learn about herself and what she wants from life. It is also a story of the love of books and learning. I think my favorite quote addresses the realization that every book means something different to every individual. I loved the characters, the unfolding story and Peggy and Maude and how they realize their own individual dreams. 5 stars

A companion book to Pip Williams' first book about Oxford University Press, The Dictionary of Lost Words, this one deals with the bookbinding girls at the press. The story is set at the beginning of WWI, where we meet twin sisters, Peggy and Maude Jones. The girls began working at the bindery at the age of 12, as had their mother and grandmother before them. Peggy longs to take the time to read the pages that pass through her hands but is constantly reminded that her job is to fold them, not read them. Still, a sizable collection of pages and books have found their way to the narrowboat on the Oxford canal where they live. Peggy has a dream: to someday cross the street and study at Somerville. 'There's something about being told you can't have access that makes you long for a place.'

One of the things holding Peggy back is her sister Maude who is a bit different and needs minding. The other is Peggy's lack of education, having quit school to be with her sister at work. And how would she pay for college? Fortunately for her, her intelligence and drive come to the attention of some well-placed women who have befriended her and she learns there is a possibility she can get a full scholarship to Somerville IF she can pass the entrance exams.

As we know, the history of the world is seldom told through women's experiences but here we have the chance to see what it was like on the home front during WWI. The women not only keep the home fires burning, cooking, cleaning, raising children, but fill many of the jobs that are vacated by the men who have gone off to the war.

In her spare time, Peggy volunteers to read and write letters for some of wounded soldiers in the hospital and there she meets a soldier from Belgium whose face has been badly disfigured. Soon a little romance is blooming between the two but would she be willing to give up her dream for him? And what about Maude?

Any lover of books might enjoy learning more about the process of printing and binding books in those days. So fascinating! And there's also the backdrop of the war and the women's suffragette movement, strangely only meant for some.

I received an arc of this novel from the author and publisher via NetGalley. Many thanks! My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

A interesting story about bookbinding with lots of British WWII history.
Overall, a ok read but not one I will want to read again.
Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

Just prior to the start of WWI twins Maude and Peggy work in the book bindery at Oxford University Press in the folding room located on the women’s side. As twins they face assumptions that they are the same, but that could not be further from the truth. Maude is a neurodiverse character with echolalia and possibly autism. She has an unrecognized intelligence and the ability to see to the heart of the matter. Peggy thinks she needs to care for Maude and underestimates her. Peggy has dreams of an education.

This is a well researched character driven novel with themes of women’s equality, the effects of war, and the cost of reaching for your dreams. I was not on the edge of my seat. However, I cared so much about the characters and always wanted to go deeper. That’s exactly what Pip Williams did. Like her previous book The Dictionary of Lost Words, this is a great choice for book clubs.

The Bookbinder by Pip Williams

After reading Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words, which occurs in the same time and place as The Bookbinder, I was better prepared not to expect things to go the way I might hope they would go. We meet Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who work in a book bindery, during 1914. The girls have already been working since their early teens and this is their life, with little to no hope for things to get better for them. Peggy loves books and learning and could have had a different future if she was born to wealth, or even more so, if she was born a man. As she binds books, she actually tries to read them but she is admonished constantly that her job is to bind books, not read them.

Maude marches to a different beat in her head than those around her. She communicates by mimicking what others say and most people just ignore her. As much as Peggy adores Maude, she also feels burdened by her. She will always be responsible for Maude's welfare and she has had to turn down opportunities because Peggy and Maude are a set, you can't have one without the other since Peggy will not abandon Maude.

But, even though Peggy understands everything that Maude communicates, it actually takes other for her to really "listen" to Maude so that she "hears" Maude and understands there is more to Maude than she has come to believe. As the story goes on, I adore Maude and thankfully there are several people who see her as more than just Peggy's helpless sister.

The war is changing London. It's taking away the boys and men and often not giving them back. At the same time, Belgium refugees are changing the Oxford landscape and the lives of the young women. The hospitals are full of critically wounded men and Peggy's volunteer work brings her into the life of a badly injured and disfigured Belgian soldier. The story is full of people in the lives of Peggy and Maude, these are not women who don't have people who care about them. Still, what I might have in mind for Peggy isn't what she wants and that is a theme of this book. Knowing and finding what you want, working for it, and knowing that to obtain that thing can mean giving up other things. And always, women struggle with not having the opportunities of men and poor people struggle with not having the opportunities of those in much better circumstances. This world is not cozy, not with war, persecution, and disease and for many people life is one hardship after another. Life goes on even when not everyone gets to go on with it. I found the business of early bookbinding very interesting and books are are big part of the life of Peggy and Maude.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for this ARC.

I really enjoyed this book! I think this would be a perfect read for my high school students and I've already atarted talking it up to some of my avid readers.

Who doesn't love a book with a plucky heroine? Add the poignant drama of WWI and the power of books, and you've got the perfect read for book-lovers. Just as she did in The Dictionary of Lost Words, author Pip Williams deftly blends historical fiction and a modern (go feminists!) perspective to tell a powerful story. Really enjoyed the exploration of classicism and what it's like to be a twin, the technical details of bookbinding, the desire for knowledge. As always, Williams' writing is beautiful on the sentence level and moving on the story level.

Historical fiction isn't always when my favorite, but when it is a book about books, I am ALL in. I loved Williams' last book and this lived up! I also happened to learn a whole lot. Bibliophiles everywhere should give this a shot.

4.5⭐️

Set in 1914 Oxford, England during the Great War, The Bookbinder by Pip Williams revolves around twin sisters twenty-one-year-old Peggy and Maude Jones who live on a narrowboat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press – jobs they have held ever since they were twelve years old. Though their job requires them “to bind books, not read them” their late mother, who passed away when they were seventeen and had been an employee of the bindery in her lifetimes instilled a love for reading and books in Peggy, who has sacrificed her dreams of attending Oxford's Somerville College in the interest of caring for her sister, who is a sweet and trusting person who requires special attention. As the war rages on and male employees are conscripted, it is up to the women to keep the press running, taking on additional responsibilities and volunteering to contribute to the war effort in every way possible. The influx of Belgian refugees many of whom take up work in the bindery, her interactions with injured servicemen recovering in the makeshift hospitals where Peggy volunteers and her acquaintance with Gwen a college student, not only enable Peggy to gain perspective on the events occurring around her but also motivate her to make an effort to exact change in her own life. The narrative follows Peggy as she navigates the horrors of war, societal norms and expectations, her responsibilities toward her sister and friends, her work in the bindery, her budding relationship with Bastiaan and her academic aspirations.

Having read and enjoyed The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, I was eager to read the author’s latest offering. I'm happy to say that with The Bookbinder the author does not disappoint! We meet Gareth and Tilda from The Dictionary of Lost Words and, both of whom have an impact on Peggy’s life and several references to Esme’s book of Women’s Words are made throughout the narrative.

(Please note that both of these books can be read as standalone and you won't face any difficulty in following the narrative of The Bookbinder if you haven't read The Dictionary of Lost Words.)

The characters and the time-period are well-drawn. Peggy is an interesting character. She is not perfect but she is someone you would root for. I adored Maude and her sweet demeanor. Tilda is a powerful character and I wish we had more scenes of her with the sisters. Revolving around themes of war, PTSD, loss, sacrifice family, friendship, and women’s rights, Peggy’s story is set against the backdrop of WWI and its aftermath, the women’s suffrage movement and the Spanish flu. The author does a remarkable job of seamlessly weaving all the threads of this story together into an engrossing narrative. I loved reading about the work culture and the different job descriptions in the bindery/press. As an avid bibliophile with a fondness for collecting hardcover editions, I really enjoyed the descriptions of the steps involved in creating a finished copy.

Please read the Author’s Note wherein she shares details about the historical context of this novel and the real people and events that inspired parts of this story. I enjoyed learning more about the era from a different perspective. I loved that the author included a copy of a page with the names /signatures of actual the bindery staff in 1915.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and look forward to reading more from the author in the future.

Many thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine and NetGalley for the much-appreciated digital review copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. The Bookbinder is due t be released on July 25, 2023.

I had the pleasure of studying abroad at Oxford University last summer, so reading The Bookbinder by Pip Williams took me back to my favorite place in the world. Following women living in the suburb of Jericho and working at the Oxford University Press, this book was such a delight. I marveled at the author's perfect lifelike descriptions of the campus and town, and loved the strong friendships between the female characters in this book. This novel cemented Pip Williams as an auto-read author for me.

This lovely story takes place during WWI (finally not WWII!) in Jericho which is apparently the town right next to Oxford where there are the Gowns and the Towns (the students and the townies). The novel focuses on Peggy, an orphaned young women who is responsible for her neurodivergent identical twin as they work daily in the book bindery. Peggy longs to be a student at Oxford and reads all she can – she is surrounded by books but is technically not allowed to read them (at least while at work). As the war goes on, Belgian refugees come to her town, some women come to help at the bindery and some to the hospital where Peggy volunteers (and slowly falls in love with one of them). The novel focuses on the losses and injuries of war (and how it changes people and their microcosmic world), the yearning of women for more freedom at a time when they were only allowed a taste, and love – the love of family as well as romantic love.

Honestly, I almost DNFed this book at about 22% and I am sooo very glad I didn’t – it’s quite beautifully written and I loved the characters and the story. It just started out so very slow and took quite a bit of time to really get into. But Peggy’s growth was really fun to watch and her first love was sweet. I enjoyed meeting and getting to know the other characters as well and I am so glad I stuck with this book, it was really an enjoyable read in the end.

This is 4.25 stars.

Thanks you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the opportunity to review

DNFed at 30%.

I really wanted to like this and it definitly wasn't a bad book, but it just wasn't for me. I read books for engaging plots, and this just didn't have that. The relationship between Maude and Peggy was the only part that I found interesting, but it simply wasn't enough to carry a whole book. Williams did a good job with the setting and took full advantage of writing from Peggy's POV, giving not only Peggy, but all the characters a lot of dimension. However, 30% in, the story still didn't feel like it was going anywhere and I didn't care enough about Peggy to keep reading.

This is definitly a book that can find a large audience--due to its good writing and close examination of sisterly bonds--but unfortunately, I'm not part of it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for providing me with an ARC!

I loved her first book, but sadly this latest made me irritated as I found it repetitive and flat. The characters all seemed the same to me, and I couldn’t connect to the material.

Pip Williams writes intriguing historical novels. Not a sequel, but in the same world and with a few of the same characters as The Dictionary of Lost Words, this novel is about Peggy & Maude, twin sisters who work for a book bindery in Oxford. WWI has begun and things start to change as many young men quit their jobs to join the army and the women are left to carry on. Surrounded by books in the bindery but not supposed to read them is something that Peggy especially finds very frustrating. Definitely a member of the 'town' in Oxford (vs. the students or 'gown') she longs to study at the woman's college, Somerville but feels as if that ambition is not going to happen, especially since Peggy promised her mother - as she was dying - to take care of her sister. Maude looks just like her sister, but she looks at the world quite differently. Today we would probably assume that she was on the autism spectrum. Maude not only is quite content working in the bindery, but the art of folding paper is something that she finds quite soothing.
As the war continues a number of Belgian refugees come to Oxford. One of them, Bastiaan, is in the hospital for a long time and Peggy comes to know him when her volunteer work takes her to his hospital. The long years of WWI affect everyone in Britain and Peggy, Maude and many others live through these years finding that their jobs and lives change and mourn those who are killed and injured in the war. This was another interesting book by Williams, covering a subject that is not that familiar and with characters that you get quite caught up with.

My expectations were probably too high as I approached this book, as I loved the author's previous novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words. I really liked the premise, but I'm not a huge historical fiction fan especially WWI or WW2 ) so this one ended up being just ok for me. The writing and character development are strong, so I have no doubt that The Bookbinder will hit just right for the right readers.

I will definitely read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

The Bookbinder is a wonderful written story.
A story of sisters and self discovery. A great historical fiction. Set in WW1 and of all paces, a book bindery!
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

3.5/5 stars! I received an ARC from Affirm Press and Pip Williams via NetGalley.

I'm a multi-genre reader, but historical fiction is a genre I rarely find myself in. The world and character building in this book were beautiful. I felt like I was actually in the buildings and on the boat. I felt like I knew the characters like I know my close friends. The romance subplot was great. However, I did feel like the story moved quite slowly. Sometimes, I found myself waiting for something interesting to happen that would make me want to keep reading. It took me a while to get through this read as I kept losing interest and putting it down for a break.

I do love Pip Williams' writing and the worlds she creates. With a few more action pieces added in, I think this book could have easily been 5 stars.

A young woman who works in a bindery finds the courage to pursue her dreams during WWI while living with her autistic sister on a narrowboat in Oxford. Still grieving from the loss of her mother and burdened by her promise to care for her sister, Peg is more interested in reading books than binding them.

The book is written beautifully with well-developed characters and detailed history which is well integrated into the characters’ lived. I especially enjoyed two aspects of this story - Peg’s relationship with her sister, who is less dependent on Peg than she originally appears and Peg’s personal growth as she wrestles with her restrictions as a working class woman while her interest in literature is more aligned with the privileges afforded to women of a higher class. It is Peg’s relationships that help her to recognize her own needs and pursue a life that has meaning for her.

My only qualm with this book is that some of the situational descriptions could be more fleshed out. Even after rereading some parts, I was uncertain of what the author was trying to convey.

I highly recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction and to those who enjoy a thoughtful and engaging read.

Thank you to the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 - I had a hard time rating this book. There were parts that I really liked and parts that I wanted to hurry up. It takes place during WWI and centers around a book bindery (I loved this aspect of it) and the distance between the Towns and Gowns. There were many unique aspects to this book and I think that overall it was an interesting read.