https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/14/the-liars-dictionary-by-eley-williams-review-a-glorious-way-with-words

Williams’s debut novel, a tale of two lexicographers, is a playful delight

I don’t know if any of the newspaper fiction previews that appeared at the end of 2016 tipped Eley Williams’s first collection, Attrib. and Other Stories, published by independent press Influx, as a book to look out for. But 12 months later, it was all over the end-of-year roundups – a deserved sleeper hit that made sparks fly by dint of sheer wordplay, as Williams’s fretful, philosophically inclined narrators zero in on passed-over nuances of language.

The success of Attrib. had readers keenly awaiting this first novel, and it doesn’t disappoint. A virtuoso performance full of charm, it follows two lexicographers 100 years apart – Mallory, who narrates in the present, and Winceworth, shown in 1899. Both work for Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, a lesser-known rival to more illustrious reference works, and an eccentric labour of love maintained by generations of the Swansby family.