Thankyou Readers First for my copy of this book which I received after writing my first impression.
This is a beautiful little book-it feels lovely in the hand and has some gorgeous little illustrations throughout.
This is a tender, gentle story, a little love letter to language. It is a different concept for a book. It tells the story of words, words that are sentient and live lives as we do.
It really made me smile. One word in particular is spoken out loud by a human and forgets it’s own name. Every word embodies it’s own name and this little word adventures through it’s world to find out where it belongs, as without family and meaning you are nothing.
I enjoyed this book, it has joyful simple prose and clever use of language to describe a world of words.
Using descriptions of the body of a word - ‘the little letter on its right syllable had gone completely numb’
‘Deaf’- who uses servant words to enable him to speak
Terrifying ‘brackets’ that capture words and make them disappear without trace
All of these and so many more I found a clever, different way to engage me as a reader.
No, I will not say the words name, you will find out for yourself
This book will sit quietly on my shelf and every so often, as the author says, I will leaf through it and return to a world which I have left behind.