The Broken Teaglass

by Emily Arsenault, Oliver Wyman Eileen Stevens, Therese Plummer (Reader)

The dusty files of a venerable dictionary publisher, a hidden cache of coded clues, a story written by a phantom author, an unsolved murder in a gritty urban park. All collide memorably in Emily Arsenault's magnificent debut, at once a teasing literary puzzle, an ingenious suspense novel, and an exploration of definitions: of words, of who we are, and of the stories we choose to define us.

In the maze of cubicles at Samuelson Company, editors toil away in silence, studying the English language, poring over new expressions and freshly coined words—all in preparation for the next new edition of the Samuelson Dictionary. Among them is editorial assistant Billy Webb, just out of college, struggling to stay awake and appear competent. But there are a few distractions. His intriguing coworker Mona Minot may or may not be flirting with him. And he's starting to sense something suspicious going on beneath this company's academic facade.

Mona has just made a startling discovery: a trove of puzzling citations, all taken from the same book, The Broken Teaglass. Billy and Mona soon learn that no such book exists. And the quotations from it are far too long, twisting, and bizarre for any dictionary. They read like a confessional, coyly hinting at a hidden identity, a secret liaison, a crime.

As Billy and Mona ransack the office files, a chilling story begins to emerge: a story about a lonely young woman, a long-unsolved mystery, a moment of shattering violence. And as they piece together its fragments, the puzzle begins to take on bigger personal meaning for both of them, compelling them to redefine their notions of themselves and each other.

Charged with wit and intelligence, set against a sweetly cautious love story, The Broken Teaglass is a tale that will delight lovers of words, lovers of mysteries, and fans of smart, funny, brilliantly inventive fiction.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Books About Books, Mystery Thriller, Contemporary, Audiobook, Literary Fiction

MP3 CD

First published September 29, 2009

About the author

I haven’t had a terribly interesting life, so I won’t share too many details. But the highlights include:

• When I was a preschooler and a kindergartner, I had a lazy eye and I was Connecticut’s “Miss Prevent Blindness,” appearing on pamphlets and television urging parents to get their kids’ eyes checked. I wore an eye patch and clutched a blonde doll wearing a similar patch. I imagine it was all rather maudlin, but at the time I wouldn’t have known that word.

• I wrote my first novel when I was in fifth grade. It was over a hundred pages and took me the whole school year to write. (It was about five girls at a summer camp. I’d never been to a summer camp, but had always wanted to attend one.) When I was all finished, I turned back to the first page, eager to read it all from the beginning. I was horrified at how bad it was.

• At age thirteen, I got to go to a real sleepaway camp. It was nothing like the book I had written.

• I studied philosophy in college. So did my husband. We met in a Hegel class, which is awfully romantic.

• I worked as an editorial assistant at Merriam-Webster from 1998-2002, and got to help write definitions for their dictionaries.

• My husband and I served in the Peace Corps together, working in rural South Africa. I miss Losasaneng, miss many of the people we met there, and dream about it often.

• I am now working on my third novel. It is tentatively titled Just Someone I Used to Know, named after and old song Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton used to sing together.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, but not great. Mostly, I didn't like the voice of the main male character. It's one of the most commonly made mistakes in writing from the viewpoint of the opposite sex and in this case it was really obvious. If the author had made the main character female instead of trying to force a false male voice out of the narrative, maybe it would have given her a few extra points over all.

The book itself--eh. The plot sounds intriguing enough, two people find a hidden story among their work as lexicographers (the people who write/edit the dictionary) that may actually be the confession of a murderer. Through the course of the novel they piece together the slips of paper, getting one step closer to the answers and the possible involvement of their other co-workers.

Intriguing? Sounds like. Executed that way? No. The story spent way too much time building up a relationship between the two main characters that never amounts to anything and not enough time focusing on the back story or the more intriguing parts of the mystery itself.

The dialogue was also very false. A lot of times characters would throw back witty comments or snappy comebacks that no one in real life would actually ever say, further solidifying how the author was over thinking everything instead of just going with it.

The plot, as it turns out, was not really that interesting. Nothing really came of it and in the end, the characters remained exactly the same without much difference from the beginning of the novel. The main characters cancer plot, thrown in midway through the story in an obvious meant to be a bombshell way, felt unnatural and forced and added nothing to the story except to show the author's clear floundering for character depth and back story at too late a point in the narrative.

All in all, starts out interesting, but falls very flat in the end.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel like a complete heel. I won this book though a Goodreads giveaway. A two paragraph review in this weekend's New York Times Book Review liked this book. All the reviews here seem positive.

I couldn't finish it.

To be fair, I don't think it is Arsenault's fault. In fact, I would be willing to give her next book a try. I think it comes down to bad editing.

The premise behind the book is interesting. Two workers at a dictionary publishing house discover what appears to be a murder mystery buried in word citations. There is use of word play and literary clues. I can see why this got published. It is an attempt to get some of the market share that picked up The Thirteenth Tale or The Shadow of the Wind. The problem, and for me it was a huge, insurmountable problem, was the pacing and the repeatition.

The murder mystery first comes to light in what are called "cits", notes of quotes of how a word is used. Mona and Billy, the two central characters, notice that some cits refer to The Broken Teaglass and seem to give page numbers. Strangely this book doesn't seem to exist. The two want to figure out what the deal is, as it were. To do so, they find more cits from the Broken Teaglass and organize the cits in numerical order. This means the reader of Arsenault's own book is subjected to reading the same cit 1-3 times and then hearing the characters talk about for an additional 2-4 pages. It's true, I suppose, that attention spans are shorter today, but that short? It wouldn't be so bad if the reader was re-reading the cit after say 100 pages. But that's not the case.

The pacing itself is off. At times the book really, really drags. I skimmed the last 50 pages I read. The characters during these times are very flat. Just because I know about Billy's family, his love for jokes, and the fact he can cook, doesn't mean it makes him a character. In many ways, Billy's father who had shorter screen time seemed more of a person than his son, the central character of the book. This problem is also true of Mona.

The reason why I think this problem is due to a lack of editing and not Arsenault herself, is that there are beautiful passages in the book. Arsenault seems to shine when the characters actually, really, truly talk. There will be a few pages of absolutely wonderful conversation, and then BANG! the book drags. Billy and Mona become flat. It almost feels bipolar. Maybe its intentional to show a quarterlife crisis. If so, it's doesn't work. This problem is something a good editor should have caught and fixed.

So, sadly I didn't like this book. I will, however, give Arsenault's next book a try. The dialogue was really that good.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am so caught between three and four stars for this book. It was unique, and intriguing. I learned something new about a field (lexicography) about which I knew nothing. The story was compelling, and although I unraveled some parts of the mystery at about the same time as the main characters, I never felt I 'knew' the ending - key for me in a mystery. I especially liked the clue searches.

The one major fault with the book is this: No character ever asked the one question I was burning to know. "What happened to the girl?" I can understand leaving questions like that unanswered in a book, but unasked seems a crime.

[Reading Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Billy Webb has just taken a position at the largest dictionary company in the US. Unfortunately the company is in the armpit of Massachusetts, but Billy is gung-ho about his first job out of college. The job is about as exciting as one might expect. His first day of training consists of reading all of the "front matter" of the dictionary. His coworkers field phone calls about Scrabble fights, and none of them talks to any other lexicographer much, until Mona talks to him. Mona is about Billy's age and has been working at the dictionary company for about a year when Billy starts. Together they find a couple of fishy "cits" or "citations"--examples of words in actual use-- in the dictionary's files. The fishy citations alert Billy and Mona to something that must have happened at the dictionary company in the past, something that might have involved an actual corpse. They dig deeper and look for more of the citations...and it doesn't take long before they find them.

This book is fabulous.The plot is fabulous, the characters are fabulous, the setting is somehow both boring and fabulous. The plot has a few twists and turns and surprises, but it's also so easy to just enjoy the simple straightforward path to solving the mystery. And, Billy was a high school football player who majored in philosophy. Mona has her own conflict of identity. At times she seemed on the verge of being Billy's manic pixie dream girl, but it blessedly never happens. Even the side and peripheral characters have interesting and complex lives that the reader at least gets to sample.

This book seems handcrafted for all the wordsmiths, writers, English majors, etymologists, etc. But, even if you aren't all those things the mystery may well suck you in anyway.

[Dinyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tahukah Anda bahwa ada sebuah profesi bernama Lexicographer? Jika tidak, berarti Anda sama dengan saya dan semoga Tuhan mengampuni kekhilafan kita ini. Memang rasanya profesi ini tidak popular dan kedengarannya cenderung mengada-ada. Apalagi kita tinggal di sebuah negeri seperti Indonesia, negeri yang sejarah modernnya tidak mendorong rakyatnya mengakrabi bentuk-bentuk dokumentasi tertulis, apalagi kamus. Leksikografer adalah penyusun kamus, orang yang berkutat mencari definisi kata. Kata-kata yang menyusun dunia kita, yang membentuk kesadaran dan pemahaman kita, yang menjadi awal penilaian kita tentang apa yang benar dan apa yang salah. Jika Anda tidak mengerti fungsi kata apalagi mencintai kata, saya tidak heran kalau Anda tidak melihat pentingnya profesi Leksikografer ini. Tapi jika sebaliknya, Anda percaya bahwa kata adalah kehidupan – seperti saya – maka, saya yakin setidaknya Anda akan tergerak untuk coba membaca buku The Broken Teaglass karya perdana Emily Arsenault.

Protagonis The Broken Teaglass adalah seorang leksikografer muda bernama Billy. Sebenarnya Billy adalah lulusan fakultas filsafat. Entah kenapa, dia diterima bekerja di Penerbit Samuelson, penerbit yang mengkhususkan pada penerbitan kamus. Billy yang sama sekali tidak memiliki latar belakang linguistic mengawali hari-harinya di Samuelson dengan berlatih mendefinisikan kata dibawah bimbingan salah satu editor senior Samuelson, yang rupanya juga menjadi penentu diterimanya Billy bekerja di penerbit itu. Ternyata latihan mendefinisikan kata ini menjadi awal keterlibatan Billy dalam penyingkapan sebuah cerita berlatar belakang kematian seorang lelaki yang terjadi di tahun 80an di Claxton, kota tempat Samuelson berdiri. Bersama Mona, juga salah satu editor muda di Samuelson, Billy jungkir balik menekuni apa yang disebut di Samuelson sebagai “Cit Files”, koleksi suci berisi ribuan kutipan tentang kata apa saja yang bisa didapat dari majalah atau koran sebagai dasar bagi para editor untuk mendefinisikan kata tersebut. The Broken Teaglass yang dipakai Emily Arsenaut sebagai judul ternyata adalah sebuah buku fiktif yang terkait dengan kasus kematian misterius itu, yang ternyata juga melibatkan beberapa orang di Samuelson.

Misteri pembunuhan dan buku fiktif yang seolah menjadi kunci untuk mengungkap siapa pembunuh si korban adalah motif yang membangun ketegangan dalam The Broken Teaglass. Namun, yang membuat motif ini menjadi sangat menarik dan membuat The Broken Teaglass berbeda dari buku-buku misteri adalah cara penyampaiannya yang mengambil latar belakang dunia penerbitan kamus. Sambil menelusuri kasus pembunuhan itu pembaca buku ini dapat melihat bagaimana sebuah kamus bisa sampai ke tangan pembaca, lebih tepatnya bagaimana seorang leksikografer bekerja. Saya misalnya, sangat menikmati bagian-bagian yang menjabarkan bagaimana Billy dan Mona bekerja, bagaimana mereka dilatih untuk mendefinisikan kata, bagaimana mereka sebagai editor pemula harus melalui tahap membalas surat konsumen dan saya pun terkikik-kikik membaca bagian yang menggambarkan bagaimana seorang editor melayani pembaca yang menelepon langsung ke Samuelson sehubungan dengan pertanyaan, keberatan, atau gugatan atas definisi sebuah kata yang ada dalam kamus terbitan Samuelson.

Meskipun demikian buan berarti buku ini menggambarkan bagaimana tokoh-tokohnya bicara dan menulis dalam kata-kata bahasa Inggris yang keningrat-ningratan yang membuat kita sebagai pembaca harus duduk di samping kamus ketika membaca. Sebaliknya, tokoh Mona dan Billy, sebagaimana orang yang masih termasuk muda, banyak menggunakan bahasa slengean yang sangat kontras dengan pekerjaan mereka di Samuelson. Selain itu, Billy dan Mona pun ditampilkan sebagai tokoh-tokoh dengan kerapuhan mereka masing-masing, terkait dengan masa lalu mereka. Hubungan di antara keduanya tidak menjadi sesuatu yang banal semacam cinta lokasi, mereka bahkan tidak secara eksplisit dinyatakan sebagai kekasih sampai buku ini berakhir.

Sebuah kamus – dalam bahasa apapun – tidak sanggup memuat semua kata yang pernah dipaki manusia sepanjang sejarah dunia. Setiap kata butuh waktu untuk membuktikan eksistensinya sampai kemudian dia bisa menjadi satu entri di salam sebuah kamus. Manusialah, tepatnya pengguna bahasa itu sendirilah, yang menentukan kemenangan atau kekalahan sebuah kata. Kamus hanyalah media dokumentasi dan para leksikografer hanya bertugas mencari definisi kata. Bahasa dan kata pada akhirnya adalah tanggung jawab sebuah bangsa atau kelompok yang menggunakannya. Saya rasa nilai-nilai ini tersurat dan tersirat dalam karya Emily Arsenault The Broken Teaglass dan sangat relevan dengan situasi kebudayaan bangsa-bangsa dunia saat ini, termasuk Indonesia. Di masa sekarang ini ketika bahasa diabaikan dan disingkat dengan semena-mena, pemahaman manusia akan dunia sekitarnya pun sering kali seadanya, terputus-putus, tidak koheren dan akhirnya membunuh bahasa itu sendiri. Pertanyaan untuk kita sekarang: Maukah kita hidup sambil mencintai dan menghormati kamus?


Tentang penulis: Emily Arsenault pernah bekerja sebagai leksikografer, guru bahasa Inggris, pustakawan di sebuah perpustakaan anak dan sukarelawan Peace Corps. The Broken Teaglass adalah debutnya yang ditulis ketika dia tinggal di Afrika Selatan. Arsenault saat ini tinggal bersama suaminya di Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I may be giving a higher rating than it deserves, but I really really enjoyed reading this book. Arsenault's novel deals with the life of a lexicographer and how he tries to solve a "mystery" that really isn't a mystery in order to make his life bearable and less lonely. I know this sounds a bit off putting, but, for whatever reason, this book touched me a on personal level.
I think everyone (literally everyone) goes through a point in their lives where there is a stand still and you need something in order to make a bond with someone else or just something that makes life worth living and this book 100% deals with that issue.

Billy and Mona are great characters and they are not what they appear to be. Although you think you might understand Billy and Mona from what is stereotypically described about them, there is so much more below the surface. The characters are really well developed and I really like how the two try to forge a connection with each other because there is nothing else in their lives. I also liked how Arsenault deals with their relationship, you expect something to happen, but she does not give you the pleasure or the easy ending, which I really, really appreciated.

Another thing I absolutely loved about this book is the lexicographer information that she plugs into the story. I love words and learning about the dictionary and origins of words was extremely interesting and fun for me. She tells you about the origin of the word NERD and other words too, so that was an added bonus. Also, Arsenault really touches the heart of how it is in the working world - the bullshit that is involved, the isolation, the tedious work that is really unappreciated or noticed in a company - she touches all of these things.

All in all, check this book out. There is some romance, there is a mystery, and you can learn a lot about what goes into making a dictionary.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

There will be spoilers here, but I will mark them with a warning.

This is a pretty good debut novel. It'd make a great gift for lovers of words, although the whole "mystery" thing in it felt a little lacking. It'd also make a great gift for a recent college grad, since that is the age of the two main characters.

In that sense, while I felt like I could relate to the characters, I also felt the characters weren't realistic enough, although I did like Mona's character and thought Billy related to one of my friends. There's a lot of cool lingo in the book, points where I laughed because I could see two early-twenty-something's saying such sarcastic and silly things. The older generation might just shake their heads at some of the stuff, though.

I understand the fear in fleshing out the characters too much-- it would have turned them from real people into rubbish bin Office Space characters, but I still would have liked to have been able to relate to some of them a little more.

As far as the mystery goes, there was way too much of characters just sitting and talking about the clues-- this is a good device, but after a while, it just starts to feel like instead of the book pulling you into the mystery, you're just watching some mystery-driven sitcom.

Indeed, I'd call this a sitcom book. At the end, it didn't feel very satisfying, although I did enjoy reading the book and wanted to know how it turned out. Your average reader would probably love this, but if you're used to heavier material, the flaws are pretty obvious.

I did enjoy the premise, however. I just wish it had been more thoughtfully laid out as to maximize the "oh my gosh!" aspects of the story.

DANGER! Spoilers!

I wish goodreads had an option of just hiding spoilers, instead of hiding the entire review. This book is new, so I want to support the author by giving a review that will, hopefully, make people want to go out and buy the book.

But I also want to discuss spoilers. So here goes:

Collecting joke books and smoking reefer with your dad do not a cancer survivor make.

Seriously? 3/4 of the way through the book, the author slams us with one of the characters being a cancer survivor. This actually ends up having something to do with the main story, at least philosophy-wise. I understand why she did it, but she didn't do it well enough. It shouldn't have come as a shock to us, although I understand that it was meant to be that way, because the character kept it hidden from pretty much everyone, and in the end, is still trying to cope with it. At the very least, the author should have given us MORE clues. The reader should wonder what the person is hiding, and I'm sorry, but having the father come in with weed and asking to smoke it to "ease the pain" and having the obsession with joke books doesn't really plant anything in the reader's head.

The book, had it been more thought-out, would have been a lot better, but as a debut novel, it's pretty good, and I'll be looking for more of Ms. Arsenault's work.

[audrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Such an intriguing plot concept! And yet the main characters in this book were so milquetoast and uninteresting that I kept hoping they'd fall into a ditch, either together or separately, metaphorically -- whatever. Instead, they spent 300 pages jerking each other (and themselves) around, before the book ends on a sad little narrative fart.

Content notes:animal death and neglect, alcohol abuse, drunk driving, attempted kidnapping, murder, tooth harm, and mention of divorce, and major illness.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

My expectations for this book were clearly far too high. I don't remember what review prompted me to buy it, but the combination of lexicography and mystery with a positive review seemed like a winner. There's a blurb on the back that should have set off alarm bells right away: "Charming and witty are not the usual adjectives used to describe a mystery novel". Maybe if you mostly read from the gritty end of the mystery genre, but I would say that my favourite mystery novels are by definition charming and witty. Even if the ignorance of the blurber might be forgiven if the novel was in fact charming and witty, I should have been suspicious that they didn't manage to get blurbed by someone who knew anything about charming and witty mystery novels.

The narrator, Billy, is pretty bland. There are a lot of characters who are mentioned and never develop into anything. There are a few characters who are slightly developed but in the end there is no reason to be interested in them or care about them -- which is very fortunate, because there is basically no growth or resolution to any aspect of their lives. The resolution of the "mystery" of The Broken Teaglass is dull. When Billy's coworker Mona brings The Broken Teaglass to Billy's attention, it seemed like it could be interesting and clever, and I spent far too much time trying to come up with anagrams of teaglass that could lead somewhere. The characters in the book didn't even mention the idea of looking up the entry for teaglass in the dictionary until halfway through the book and even then it turned out that Mona had thought about it and done it long before mentioning it to Billy and it had led nowhere. Anagrams were never even discussed. Billy's neighbour and the neighbour's never-seen wife were irrelevant. The Korean War was apparently irrelevant, unless I was supposed to infer that Red was actually Mary Anne's biological father. Billy's recovery from Hodgkin's disease could possibly have been interesting if it hadn't been treated obscurely until 2/3 of the way through the book. Nobody appeared to love words or have any interesting thoughts about lexicography.

[Jim Leffert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here’s a mystery story by a first-time author that adds a new twist to the genre—a mystery that unfolds at a dictionary publishing company. (With its deep delving into the quotidian workings of lexicography, it was a little reminiscent of a story that I imagined as a teenager: Murder at the Cereal Factory, by Agatha Krispie.) The book plods on for a while at a slow pace, but eventually it gathers force and reaches a satisfying conclusion, in which the resolution is revealing of character and something about life, not just about the facts of a particular mystery. Not that it’s an exceptionally profound book; but it turned out to be a rewarding one.

The protagonist, Billy, is a young college graduate and cancer survivor who gets a job at the venerable Samuelson dictionary publisher. As he begins his work, he discovers unusual entries in the citations files (which are collected to provide the foundation for writing word definitions). These citations, ostensibly from a book called The Broken Teaglass, are patently not from any published source and hint at violent events that occurred in or around the company itself. Together with a young co-worker, Mona, Billy tries to find more of these citations and figure out what it is all about.

Along with the interesting ins-and-outs of lexicography, we encounter some quirky (but not so quirky) people and a little bit of humor (for the most part, not extremely funny) and some unrequited romance. (Since the dictionary publishing company’s office is home to thousands of citations on slips of paper, is it safe to have someone working there who is carrying a torch?) As I said, much of the story is slow going, but the patient reader will be rewarded when everything eventually starts to fall into place.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two young lexicographers, Mona and Billy, working for a venerable dictionary company, discover something odd in the company's citation files: every now and then there's a citation that comes from a nonexistent 1985 novel called The Broken Teaglass, written by a nonexistent author. As they come across more of these citations, they realize both that there's a pattern to where the citations might be found and that, taken together in the right order, these little snippets of text might actually tell a coherent story.

Their suspicion is correct. The citations comprise a confession of a long-ago crime . . .

I had genuine difficulty putting this book down. It's longer than it should be, with lots of philosophical and linguistic digressions, but I really enjoyed those digressions so didn't mind. And there's more repetition than there should be, too: we're offered many of the citation extracts twice and three times, something that could have been avoided, I think, by some careful tending to the first half of the book. But again this didn't much concern me. If you like, in Goodreads terms, it reduced my rating of the novel from six stars to five.

There's one chronological hiccup: on page 92 it's October while quite a few days later, possibly weeks, on page 114 it's now "early autumn."

A mystery. Some very interesting central characters. Lots of stuff about words -- and, even better, some pretentious snobbery about words. Just to cap it all, I could be snobbish myself because the characters clearly find some words very unusual that I regard, swankety swank, as part of my standard vocabulary. The Broken Teaglass could have been tailor-made for moi. What fun!

[Chel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't remember how or why this book came to be on my shelf. Possibly it was on one of those racks in Barnes and Noble where you can buy 3 books for the price of 2, and I needed a filler. Anyway, I finally shoved it in my shoulder bag because it was the right size.

I was initially charmed. The action (such as it is) is set in the day to day life of a team of lexicographers ever updating the dictionary and responding to really wacky letters and phone calls from word geeks like me. The enchantment lasted about 25 pages before the tedium set in. I went from really, really wishing I had a job at Samuelson (modeled, I believe, on Merriam Webster) to being glad my life isn't that dull!

But there is a clever premise. Buried in the voluminous files of citations on which definitions are based are quotations from a book that was never written, never published. As the bits of citations are found and pieced together, they seem to be about a murder, and they seem to refer to the people who work at Samuelson. An interesting distraction for two entry-level dictionary editors who don't have much else going on in their lives.

I honor the book's cleverness. I can't say I enjoyed it much. Next time I want a linguist detective to read about, I'll get something by David Carkeet.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Billy Webb is starting his first "real" job as an editorial assistant for The Samuelson Company, publishers of an English dictionary. At work his days are filled with answering letters from members of the public and researching unusual or new words and documenting their usage. At home, he struggles to find meaning in his life and to keep himself occupied. The discovery of some unusual citations in the company's old files leads him to join with a co-worker in attempting to solve a mystery.

While individual aspects of the story - the work of lexicographers creating a dictionary, the slow piecing together of an old mystery and the attempts by Billy to create an "adult" life for himself - are interesting, the rate that the author chose to share information with the reader is strangely off, resulting in a book that is weighted too heavily toward the end. Basic information is kept back that would have helped the reader care about the characters much earlier in the story and results in an "info dump" ending. If some of the informational weight had been redistributed throughout the story, I think I would have enjoyed The Broken Teaglass much more than I did.

[Ruby · Rating 2 out of 5]

An intriguing story for any "word person" as the narrator, fresh from getting a philosophy degree, gets a job in a dictionary publishing house. His job is to look for unusual words or usage of words and write up the "citations" for the editors to consider for the next edition. Currently of course the "cits" are on the computer, but there are voluminous paper files of all the pre-computer cits. He and coworker Mona discover in the old files, a series of cryptic cits that seem to refer to a crime committed years ago. They determine to find out what happened.

This was fascinating enough for a good read, but the other elements, like the characters' back stories, physical health, etc., are slow to build and aren't really integrated into the main story, which is a story within a story. I would like to give it a higher rating, but think that it would be misleading. Indeed, the opening scene, with the narrator drunk and Mona knocking heavily on the door, are misleading. But for a story about words, it's top notch.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because I was looking for a fun, light mystery. I loved the premise--a mystery set in the office of people who write dictionaries. As I write that, I realize it sounds dull. But for a person who loves words and mysteries, it seemed like an ideal combo. And yet, every page of this book was a struggle for me. The mystery wasn't compelling, the characters were whiny, the way the "clues" were rolled out didn't make me think I was figuring out anything but just that the writer was holding things back from me. I want to feel smart when I'm reading a mystery and in this one, I felt kind of left out. So, not a fan. But kudos for the premise.

[Juniper · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. I wish this book was so much better for me than it turned out. The threads of the story just did not come together well, and the characters were not well developed. This book felt more like a missed opportunity and it was, unfortunately, a slog to get through. (Sorry!)

[Meagan Houle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came for the mystery, but I stayed for the tidbits about working as a lexicographer. I'll just say that up front.
The title pulled me in, the puzzle was a clever driving force for the story, and the characters were vaguely amusing, if not altogether vivid. But the casually dropped hints about working for a dictionary--the eccentric correspondence, the painstaking "research reading," the equivocal process of definition itself--these held all the magic for me.
If the author ever decides to write a memoir about her time as a lexicographer, I'll be first in line to read that one. For now, "The Broken Teaglass" was a fun way to pass the time. While the details of the mystery will soon fade, I won't soon forget the glimpse into a lexicographer's world.

[Tory Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 3/4 of the book was wonderful. I really enjoyed the scenes from the Samuelson Company where employees read and noted new words or found old words with new meanings for the dictionary they publish. The last 1/4 of the book was a rather abrupt change and seemed to belong to a different book.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very original story with enjoyable characters. A story I keep thinking about. I highly recommend it!

[Mindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. It took me a while to get into it but once I did it was enjoyable. Not stellar but worth a listen.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

First Sentence: I lifted my head when I heard her knocking.

Billy Webb is a young man, recently graduated from college, joins a dictionary publishing company and begins work as a lexicographer on their annual update. His job is to research possible words which should be added. There he meets coworker Mona who keeps coming across slips of paper with words that seem to be bits of a story. The citation for each is a book entitled “The Broken Teaglass”, which doesn’t seem to exist, but sets the two on the hunt for the book, a possible crime and, possibly, a romance.

More of a literary novel, perhaps, than a mystery the book begins with an intriguing prologue followed by a first chapter that is a complete contrast.

Billy is young; something of which I had to keep reminding myself. He is 24 years old and seems immature at times. I do credit the author for, end the end, providing us with something of an explanation as to why he is, as he is. I did find the least appealing aspect of his character was the amount of alcohol he consumed, as well as his annoying habit of plying Mona with liquor. But again, he is young. Of the two characters, Mona was the better, stronger one. Mr. Samuelson, a retiree, was one of the best characters.

The most fascinating part of the story, for me, was learning how dictionaries are created; how words are included, updated, changed, etc. A dictionary is something on which I have always depended without every considering how or by whom. …”Oh, Billy,” she [Mona] said, opening her door,” Don’t hate words. Hate the people who misuse them.” I did appreciate that we slowly learn the quite interesting backstory on the characters.

“The Broken Teaglass” was an interesting story that kept me reading, even though I wasn’t always certain why. It was literate, funny at times, a bit slow at times, but also a bit poignant. In the end, nothing was really resolved, but isn’t that true of life. I wouldn’t define it as a “must read,” but I am very glad I read it.

THE BROKEN TEAGLASS (Mys-Billy Webb/Mona Minot-Massachusetts-Cont) – G+
Arsenault, Emily – 1st book / Standalone
Delacourt Press, 2009

[Yvann S · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How does a clod like me end up in training to be a lexicographer?"

Billy has landed a job at Samuelson Dictionary Company, researching new words, defining a few for the annual Supplement, and answering letters and phone calls that come in from inquiring patrons. He stumbles upon a mystery in the reference files, and slowly, with help from the petite lexicographical prodigy Mona Minot, puts it together.

There are two very distinct elements to this book. One is the life of Billy, newly out of college, struggling with the ramifications of a past illness, and starting a new job in an... unusual company. Arsenault writes beautifully about words and the love of language any lexicographer must have. She also writes with a sweet irony and understanding of the intergenerational conflict - one generation fought in Korea, the next in Vietnam, and these days (while many servicemen and women have fought and died in the Middle East) most young people are concerned with the next i-gadget.

The book was full of lines just begging to be quoted, so here they are:

"I'd been starting to doubt my employability, since I'd majored in philosophy"

"Eat dessert first."

"Lexicographers rarely make messes"

"Still, I resigned myself to the stern presence of my fellow word mavens."

"I think you may be the only Black Label-guzzling lexicographer on God's great earth."

(I'll stop now. You get the idea.) I loved the constant references to words and word play and the life of lexicographers, trying to pin down Language.

The other side of the book was the mystery that Billy and Mona discover in the reference files and I was much less taken with this. It is doled out so slowly, and Billy and Mona are the only strongly constructed characters, so the involvement of other people was difficult to grasp because I didn't have a good sense of who those people were.

A decent read, not one I'm sure I'd go out of my way to seek.

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have two words that describe my journey with this book: slow and irrelevant. The book itself took a very long time with irrelevant information to get to anti-climactic findings. There were back stories of characters or inklings that some characters may be more than what they were to later realize that no such surprises were going to wet your whistle. The main character, Billy, had cancer in the past. This fact was dwelled on but did not seem to enrich his character in any way or let you in on his reasoning for participating in the whole teaglass mess. Paralleling Billy's character, the reader finds various things out about Mona but none of the information really lets you in on why she does the things she does or behaves the way she behaves. This lack of connection makes the things that the characters do have less and less meaning. Mona herself is not really that likeable and seems to string Billy along while dragging him into this puzzle. Billy seems to have a lukewarm attraction to Mona that, after a few drinks in her and no romantic prospects, still hangs around her for no particular reason. He does not pursue her, they do not seem to have much in common for a friendship, and their banter flatlines at best. The story itself and how it unraveled was unique and interesting but, again, very slow. I was hoping that the neighbor, "Tom" knew some deep dark secret, as seemed to be hinted in the beginning of the book, but nothing ever came of it. All the characters ended up being rather nice yet monotone in character. No one character stood out to really love or hate with the exception of the murder victim, whom we haphazardly hate due only to the fact that he was a violent criminal.
Basically, this book took up some time that I needed to fill at a time that I had nothing else to read. I probably would not have finished it if not for that fact.

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's difficult to imagine that work at a dictionary company and word definitions and citations could be mysterious. But these are the elements that Emily Arsenault quite artfully combines in THE BROKEN TEAGLASS.

Billy Webb is a new hire at Samuelson Company, an esteemed dictionary publisher in New England. Billy recently graduated from college and is now working as an editor. Parts of his responsibilities include obtaining new citations or "cits" for word usage, as well as checking previously filed cits to determine if usage and definitions have changed. He discovers several cits for a book but cannot find any reference to the book in the library or anywhere else. Curiously the cits are rather long and seem to be telling a story, the story of a murder. Even more curious, the cits seem to make reference to Samuelson and several employees. Billy, with the help of a Mona Minot - a coworker, begins to investigate and seek out more cits in order to learn the entire story.

The cits tell a story of despair and in many ways seem to reflect Billy's life. Billy and Mona seem to have a friendship that borders romance, just like their mysterious author. Their stories are revealed bit by bit, just as they unravel the mystery of the cits bit by bit. Although Billy is in his mid-twenties, in many ways this is also a coming-of-age tale in addition to a mystery. I wasn't sure about the story when I first read the blurbs as I presumed it would be a dry or plodding tale. Imagine my surprise when I began reading and simply couldn't tear myself away (even with the reading block). THE BROKEN TEAGLASS is an artfully crafted story to be savored, perhaps while drinking a delicious cup of tea (may I suggest Darjeeling or Oolong).

[Marlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not this book is a mystery. I don't think it really matters how it's classified, but readers looking for a traditionally constructed mystery novel won't find it here.

What they will find is an extremely well-written story about a young man named Billy Webb, recently graduated from university with a degree in philosophy, who takes a position as an editorial assistant at a dictionary publishing house.

One of his tasks is to respond to letters with questions about definitions and word construction. Asked to respond to a letter questioning a response from another young editorial assistant, Mona Minot, he talks to her about details of the original letter. While searching through the citation files for information, they stumble across a citation that looks like a quotation from a book called The Broken Teaglass. Curious about the book, they look it up, only to find that it doesn't exist, and are ready to disregard it when they find another.

Billy and Mona become obsessed with these fragments, and begin to search the citation files for more. This quest draws the two young people into an odd friendship, through which both learn about not only each other but themselves.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, this is an unusually constructed novel, with the unlikely premise of the business of lexicography. Mystery or not, it's a cleverly fashioned novel.

[Heather Sunderland · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Broken Teaglass is a beautifully written and quirky mystery by Emily Arsenault

In the stifling boredom of a dictionary publishing house, Billy and Mona find snippets of what appears to be either a confession, evidence of a crime or a work of fiction dotted through the otherwise dry citation files – small snippets of text which put the words into context in sentences.

With little else to entertain themselves they begin unearthing and piecing together the Broken Teaglass citations and being drawn into the story unfolding on them. A story which seems to have taken place at their offices. With an air of mystery now hanging over their otherwise dull work place they find themselves looking more closely at local history and their colleagues as they try to work out who the author is, what the crime was and who the people mentioned in the citations are.

The Broken Teaglass is an effortlessly readable book and as the story on the citation files unfurls it takes on a life of its own becoming just as intriguing as the main story.

Emily Arsenault is a real wordsmith, her writing warm, witty and intelligent.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book sounded intriguing, especially for an admitted "word-nerd" like me. Set at a dictionary company full of lexicographers, where new employee Billy meets Mona and the two discover what appear to be clues to a mystery or crime in the citation files used to create new dictionary definitions and update existing ones.

Unfortunately, both the mystery and the characters in this book are all dull and plodding, with virtually nothing to connect you to them. I found the whole book so difficult to get through that I skipped large portions and hunted for information explaining the mystery and ignored the seemingly irrelevant details about the characters incredibly boring lives, and personality traits that I couldn't have cared less about.

Even when I discovered the answer to the mystery in the citations, I basically shrugged my shoulders and thought "Oh. Whatever." I just did not find anything intriguing or exciting about what was pegged as a mystery. I wouldn't recommend this

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, cerebral mystery, the main characters of which work at a fictional dictionary company. The two junior lexicographers, Billy and Mona, discover in piecemeal fashion a story, apparently of a murder, among the company's citation (or cit) files and piece the story together, literally, discovering along the way that the story itself takes place in part at a dictionary company. The narrative is well told and the topic unusual. I've probably been reading way too much suspense and shoot 'em up lately as I kept waiting for the inevitable rip-roaring parts. What this book reminded me to appreciate is patience as events unfold. The ultimate treat in this book is the human relationships, especially between Billy and Mona, and, no, not in the way you might think.

I believe this is the author's first book - I look forward to more.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this.

It started off a bit slow (I was thinking, "Eh, first novel."). But I got quite absorbed in the mystery.

Some reviewers have mentioned that they didn't like the characterizations, but that was actually one of the things I really liked. A lot. I could totally believe in these characters. There might not have been a lot of interior motivation for the characters who aren't the narrator, but isn't that a bit like real life? We can only know a limited amount about other people.

And it's about words! And dictionaries! Love it! I was surprised, though, that the discussion about prescriptivist versus descriptivist didn't come earlier in the book. There were a couple of places where I thought it should have come up, but didn't.

Seems as though one either really likes this book, or doesn't at all. Count me among those who really like it.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had heard about this book when it first came out, put it on my wish-list and found it under the Christmas tree. It was a fun read for me, learning about the process involved in creating dictionaries and watching as a mystery unfolded. The story is not necessarily great or enthralling, but I just liked the way it unfolded, despite the main characters (Neither Billy nor Mona completely won me over.) I just liked watching where the story was going, and learning a little about language and lexicography in the process. Being a little bit of a word freak/word geek myself, it appealed to me. I also liked the fact that it was a mystery within a story about a survivor, rather than an outright mystery.