Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
BO/OKISH. a. from book.] Given to books.
--A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
Cathleen Schine's The Grammarians tells the story of Daphne and Laurel, word-obsessed twins bound together by their shared obsession, and also torn apart by it. One grows up to become a well-known language columnist, while the other becomes a poet--each poem an unlikely sampling of lines from a 1940s linguistics manual. Their once-united enthusiasm for words ruptures, and the twins find themselves divided by the long-standing descriptivist/prescriptivist debate about language. Daphne, the columnist, is devoted to preserving the dignity and formal elegance of traditional language; Laurel, the poet, is thrilled by the living, changing nature of English.
The girls are infatuated with the beauty, mischief, and occasional treachery of language. Every chapter opens with a definition from Samuel Johnson's dictionary; there are sibling battles over Fowler's; and the twinship finally explodes when the sisters battle, with fiery absurdity, for custody of their deceased father's copy of Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition.
In their debates about language, alternately playful and fervent, Daphne and Laurel come to define themselves, too. The Grammarians is not only a story of the delights and tolls of intimacy; it is also a celebration of the unity, and joyful comedy, of language and life.
Synopsis
An enchanting, comic love letter to sibling rivalry and the English language.
From the author compared to Norah Ephron and Nancy Mitford, not to mention Jane Austen, comes a new novel celebrating the beauty, mischief, and occasional treachery of language.
The Grammarians are Laurel and Daphne Wolfe, identical, inseparable redheaded twins who share an obsession with words. They speak a secret "twin" tongue of their own as toddlers; as adults making their way in 1980s Manhattan, their verbal infatuation continues, but this love, which has always bound them together, begins instead to push them apart. Daphne, copy editor and grammar columnist, devotes herself to preserving the dignity and elegance of Standard English. Laurel, who gives up teaching kindergarten to write poetry, is drawn, instead, to the polymorphous, chameleon nature of the written and spoken word. Their fraying twinship finally shreds completely when the sisters go to war, absurdly but passionately, over custody of their most prized family heirloom: Merriam Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition.
Cathleen Schine has written a playful and joyful celebration of the interplay of language and life. A dazzling comedy of sisterly and linguistic manners, a revelation of the delights and stresses of intimacy, The Grammarians is the work of one of our great comic novelists at her very best.