The author’s first book, The Dictionary of Lost Words, was a great success, both in Australia and overseas, and The Bookbinder of Jericho was marketed as a companion piece. I haven’t read the first, but the second stands on its own.
It is set during World War One and is narrated by Peggy who, like other girls of her class at that time in England, left school at the age of 12 and was sent to work – in the case of herself and her sister Maude, as a bookbinder in the local Clarendon Press. Previously unknown to me, books printed in the London office of Oxford University Press were published under that name but those printed in its Oxford office were published under the name Clarendon Press. But I digress.
The early chapters are dominated by detailed, technical descriptions of the task of bookbinding. I found that completely uninteresting but fortunately I persevered.
Peggy and Maude live in a narrow houseboat in Jericho, a working-class suburb of Oxford. They are identical twins but their likeness is limited to their appearance. Peggy is articulate and, thanks to the influence of her mother, has defied the then-expectations of their class with a great love of books, and she takes every opportunity to read what’s on the pages she’s binding. Maude’s speech is largely limited to echoing what others have just said. She may have what would now be diagnosed as a form of autism, but she certainly isn’t simple, as becomes increasingly clear as the book progresses.
Peggy volunteers to read to injured and often traumatised soldiers (not officers!) in hospital, during her limited free time, and there she meets Bastiaan, a Belgian refugee with half his face so disfigured by war as to be unrecognisable. Peggy has always felt the need, since her mother’s death four years before the start of this narrative, to be with Maude all the time; but Lotte, another Belgian refugee, traumatised but physically uninjured, is happy to be with Maude while Peggy is at the hospital.
Peggy’s relationship with Bastiaan gradually progresses from a professional to a personal – indeed intimate – one but, to my frustration, we never learn its ultimate outcome. She also develops an unlikely friendship with Gwen, a student from an upper-class background.
Although she thinks she is underserving of it, Peggy accepts a recommendation that she apply for a scholarship for Somerville College. She wins the scholarship, but then fails the further examination required before she’s allowed to take it up. Convinced that this confirms her belief that she is unworthy to cross the class boundary between Jericho and Oxford, for a long time she resists all pressure on her to try again.
Enough of the story. Lest you think the book is little more than a romance, nothing could be further from the truth. Two serious themes permeate the book, and in some respects, they’re not unrelated. One is the divide between the upper and working classes or, in the Oxford context, between Town and Gown; the other is the distinction between the way men and women were treated in England early in the 20th Century – a distinction which many believe has not been satisfactorily addressed a century later. During WW1, the suffragette campaign led to the enfranchising of certain women, but only women of 30 years of age and with a minimum amount of property – neither of which limitations would have given the vote to young women like Peggy, regardless of their achievements.
I must confess to feeling a sense of guilt: the only thing which prevented my rating the book five stars is my disinterest in the technicalities of bookbinding. That apart, I unreservedly recommend it… with one word of warning: depending on your emotional vulnerability, you may need a box of tissues at hand while you read it.
