I've seen a lot of reviewers of this book say it is slow. It is. However, I personally was also unable to put it down because it is exactly the sort of character driven novel I love. It spans almost the entire life of its main character, and Esme is very much tied to the Scriptorium and the first edition of the Oxford Dictionary. How she lives a quiet life, bound up in words, their meanings, and their impact was deeply appealing to me. I appreciate how Williams used her life to highlight how women were (and are still often) left out of the discussions on the major parts of history. When history is written by a very elite, homogenous group, the consequence is that whole histories and cultures are lost to time. That Williams demonstrates this through the process of the codifying a language and the words that are lost because they don't fit the parameters set by the elite group doing the codifying. Her notes at the end are well worth the read as well. I loved all the characters in this book. The characters and people important to and and impactful of Esme's life all jumped off the page for me. (Lizzie, Gareth, and Ditte being my personal favorites) Esme and the quiet yet still eventful life she had-one of love, lost, and work well accomplished-is a beautiful story, and Williams prose in telling it renders in even more beautiful.