The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams is my book of the month for June 2024. What a joy! Polished writing (brilliant editing, well done Vintage – a division of Penguin – there’s been a lot of poor editing from major houses recently), a beautiful story with so much packed into it without a lot of dramatic action.
Peggy is an identical twin, but while physically she and Maude are hard to distinguish, her twin is quite far on what today we know as the autistic spectrum. Peggy is not, and has inherited from her mother a love of books and learning. They live on a narrowboat on the canal in Oxford and both work, as their mother did, at ‘the Press’ as bookbinders. They are Town, and Peggy’s ambition is one day to be Gown (belonging to the university world). Given this is 1914, her ambition is impossibly high.
Find The Bookbinder of Jericho here.
But is it? The onset of the war brings huge societal change for women, and the book traces Peggy and Maude’s different journeys over the four years. There are stellar supporting characters in Lotte, a refugee from Belgium with a tragic tale, and Bastiaan, an injured soldier from Belgian whom Peggy meets while volunteering at the hospital in Somerville College. Both provide us with insights into the horrors that the Belgians suffered in those early days of the war, in a truly human way.
The brilliant Tilda, an actress friend of the girl’s mother, provides us with insights into what it meant to be a nurse at the front through her letters to the girls from Etaples. My old friend Vera Brittain (Testament of Youth, which I found heavy going) is mentioned, as is Australian artist Iso Rae, of whom I’d never heard – check her out here.
The depths of research is outstanding and shines through in the perfect way – that is, as a natural part of the story, not ‘I found this out and therefore you will know it too.’
I was also, I admit, a little biased because I have visited Somerville twice. Once as a tour – so I knew the library, the quad etc – and once as a guest of the Principal for a formal dinner. A brilliant experience.
The Bookbinder of Jericho is very much a tale of how ordinary people faced their own versions of the war, and how they dealt with it, one way or the other. Highly recommended.
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