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by: Patricia Forde
Amazon Recommended Age: 10 years and above
Lexile: 600L
Sensitive Content: Slight violence, death
"In the city of Ark, speech is constrained to five hundred sanctioned words. Speak outside the approved lexicon and face banishment. The exceptions are the Wordsmith and his apprentice Letta, the keepers and archivists of all language in their post-apocalyptic, neo-medieval world.
On the death of her master, Letta is suddenly promoted to Wordsmith, charged with collecting and saving words. But when she uncovers a sinister plan to suppress language and rob Ark’s citizens of their power of speech, she realizes that it’s up to her to save not only words, but culture itself." (book summary)
Thoughts:
What personally made me pick up this book was, in fact, the cover. Once I picked the book up (because of the cover) it sounded too interesting to put it back down, after reading the synopsis. However, being truthful, it took me a while to really get into the flow of reading this, but once I was, it was full steam ahead. In the first 100 pages or so, I didn't really get the plot or what the climax would be. Also being truthful, given my lack of experience reading dystopian novels, I was a bit confused, at first, as to whether Ark was utopian or dystopian. I figured out later that it was dystopian. But, I did enjoy (and was a bit terrified) seeing how people were forced to converse using 500 words or less and would be banished if they didn't speak List. One other thing I was horrified by was seeing how all Ark citizens were so obliviously following Noa. Also, in the book it was said that the time period was further in the future so I was also perplexed at the use of technology. They were learning words by having someone (the Wordsmith or his apprentice) write down words on cards. That was something I didn't get. One other thing I was thinking about as I wrote this review was that I feel that The List is like Suggested Reading in a way as they both kind of are about censorship, just in different forms. The List is about censoring language and Suggested Reading is about censoring books. After finishing this book, despite what others have said about The List, I thought it to be very interesting and is certainly on my 2022 favourites shelf.
Notes:
*As this is actually only my second time reading a dystopian novel (apart from The Giver by Lois Lowry), I have not yet created a category for dystopian novels. The answer is the same to why I haven't added The List in the science-fiction category either (because I haven't read enough sci-fi). However, this book will be tagged as a dystopian novel, so when I review other dystopian novels, you can just click on the tag and all other novels that are in the same genre will show up on the website.
*I had noted down some other thoughts but can't seem to find them, but once I have, I will update this post.
*If you have looked around the web for this book, the different editions may have confused you. To simplify, The List and The Wordsmith are two different editions of the same book. The List is the name of the edition that was published in the United States and The Wordsmith is the name of the edition published in Ireland by Little Island Publishing.
*The List is the first book in The List duology. The sequel, which has three different editions (Mother Tongue, The Last Word and The Last Lie) was published in 2019. I have not read it yet, but from the reviews I have read on Goodreads, it appears to pick up from where The List left off.
Like with the first book, The List also known as The Wordsmith, Mother Tongue, The Last Word and The Last Lie are three different editions of the same book – just published under different names in different countries.
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