A sense of words

In A Sense of Words, Madeline Charlton introduces us to Eleanor, a lexicographer whose life unravels through the very lexicon she curates; each chapter pivots on a single word—'ephemeral,' 'lacuna,' 'palimpsest'—that refracts her mounting isolation. This conceit, executed with a restraint that borders on the austere, transforms the novel into a series of verbal meditations, where syntax mirrors the characters' fractured perceptions. Charlton's prose, patient and probing, eschews ornamentation for a clarity that feels earned; consider her rendering of Eleanor's dictionary revisions: 'She struck through 'trust,' substituting 'treachery,' as if the page itself might rewrite her betrayals.' The structure—episodic, dictionary-like—serves the theme admirably, inviting readers to linger on how language accrues meaning through absence as much as presence.

What elevates Charlton's work is its formal daring; the novel does not merely use words but interrogates them, layering definitions, etymologies, and personal anecdotes in a way that echoes the OED's own labyrinthine entries. Eleanor's encounters—with a philandering colleague, a estranged sister, a mute neighbor—unfold not through dramatic confrontation but via lexical dissection, where dialogue splinters into synonymic variants. This approach yields moments of quiet brilliance, as when Charlton juxtaposes Eleanor's clinical annotations against her raw journal entries, revealing the gulf between public lexicon and private lexicon. The result is a book that performs its argument: words promise precision yet deliver ambiguity; they are both scaffold and sabotage.

Structurally, Charlton employs a rhythmic precision reminiscent of early postmodern experiments, yet grounded in the tactile world of print—ink smudges, marginalia, crossed-out drafts. The novel's voice, with its balanced clauses and em-dashed asides, sustains a tone of wry detachment; Eleanor observes her own dissolution as if compiling an entry on 'grief.' Subordinate clauses proliferate like footnotes, enriching the text without overwhelming it. Charlton's ear for rhythm ensures that even the densest passages—those cataloging obsolete terms—pulse with latent music, a testament to her command of form over mere content.

Yet for all its linguistic finesse, A Sense of Words falters in its emotional register; the characters, though vividly articulated through their verbal tics, remain somewhat abstract, their inner lives inferred rather than inhabited. Eleanor's arc, tethered too rigidly to her word-of-the-chapter schema, resists the organic messiness of genuine feeling—grief arrives in neatly paragraphed definitions rather than visceral surges. This formalism, while the novel's strength, curtails its pathos; we admire the architecture but rarely ache within its rooms. Charlton's reservations about sentiment are principled, but they leave the reader appreciating the edifice from afar, not dwelling in its shadowed corners—a specific critique, then, of a debut that privileges cerebral pattern over heartfelt rupture.

In the end, A Sense of Words endures as a thoughtful intervention in literary fiction's perennial concern with language's limits; Charlton's debut, published in 1977, anticipates the metafictional turns of later decades while rooting them in a deeply personal inquiry. It demands rereading—not for plot twists, but for the way its sentences accrue new resonances, much like words themselves in lived experience. For those attuned to the novel's doing—its formal choreography of silence and surfeit—this is a book that lingers, definitionally incomplete yet profoundly suggestive.