Alice, an independent woman of the 90s, has a way with words. Like any angst-ridden speaker, she feels trapped by the tyranny of their meanings. Her therapeutic solution is to compile her own dictionary - now she will be able to make words mean what she wants. This everyday tale of bankrupt relationships and lonely hearts marries Wittgenstein with Mills and Boon - it suggests that if you can't get your (wo)man then at least you should be accurate in your disdain. In a book that is both brittly funny and profound, Mary Scott confirms her unerring ability to capture the semantics of our times.