The Grammarians
Cathleen Schine, 2019
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374280116
Summary
An enchanting, comic love letter to sibling rivalry and the English language.
From the author compared to Nora 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1953
• Where—Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Barnard College
• Currently—lives in New York City and Venice, California
In her own words:
I tried to be a medieval historian, but I have no memory for facts, dates, or abstract ideas, so that was a bust. When I came back to New York, I tried to be a buyer at Bloomingdale's because I loved shopping. I had an interview, but they never called me back. I really had no choice. I had to be a writer. I could not get a job.
After doing some bits of freelance journalism at the Village Voice, I did finally get a job as a copy editor at Newsweek. My grammar was good, but I can't spell, so it was a challenge. My boss was very nice and indulgent, though, and I wrote Alice in Bed on scraps of paper during slow hours. I didn't have a regular job again until I wrote The Love Letter.
The Love Letter was about a bookseller, so I worked in a bookstore in an attempt to understand the art of bookselling. I discovered that selling books is an interdisciplinary activity, the disciplines being: literary critic, psychologist, and stevedore. I was fired immediately for total incompetence and chaos and told to sit in the back and observe, no talking, no touching.
I dislike humidity and vomit, I guess. My interests and hobbies are too expensive or too physically taxing to actually pursue. I like to take naps. I go shopping to unwind. I love to shop. Even if it's for Q-Tips or Post-Its.
When asked what book most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
When I left graduate school after a gruesome attempt to become a medieval historian, I crawled into bed and read Our Mutual Friend. It was, unbelievably, the first Dickens I had ever read, the first novel I'd read in years, and one of the first books not in or translated from Latin I'd read in years. It was a startling, liberating, exhilarating moment that reminded me what English can be, what characters can be, what humor can be. I of course read all of Dickens after that and then started on Trollope, who taught me the invaluable lesson that character is fate, and that fate is not always a neat narrative arc.
But I always hesitate to claim the influence of any author: It seems presumptuous. I want to be influenced by Dickens and Trollope. I long to be influenced by Jane Austen, too, and Barbara Pym and Alice Munro. I aspire to be influenced by Randall Jarrell's brilliant novel, Pictures from an Institution. And I read Muriel Spark when I feel myself becoming soft and sentimental, as a kind of tonic. (From a 2003 Barnes & Noble interview.)
Book Reviews
[D]elightful…. Schine's novels… are often as witty as they are erudite…. Schine takes her readers on deep philosophical dives but resurfaces with craft and humor; her tone is amused and amusing…. What holds The Grammarians aloft, ultimately, is its riveting love story—not the tale of the twins or their respective marriages but of their deep bond with language.
New York Times Book Review
Captivating…. [W]ritten with the tender precision and clarity of a painting by Vermeer…. [A] wry and elegant novel.
Associated Press
This tale of twins who "elbow each other out of the way in the giant womb of the world" is smart, buoyant and bookish—in the best sense of the word.
Heller McAlpin - NPR
Cathleen Schine’s new novel, The Grammarians, is a rich study of the factions that attempt to define how language should be used.
The New Yorker
Schine’s sparkling latest has a prickly underside that keeps it anchored to the daily stresses of family life.… [T]he affectionate tension between the twins provides enough conflict for a lifetime. This coolly observant novel should please those who share the twins’ obsession with slippery language.
Publishers Weekly
Laurel and Daphne, identical-twin wordsmiths with fiery red hair, are this novel’s protagonists, but language is its heart ... central as words may be to this witty tale of sibling rivalry, Schine also suggests that there are some things they just can’t quite capture.
Booklist
(Starred review) Schine's warmth and wisdom about how families work and don't work are as reliable as her wry humor, and we often get both together…. This impossibly endearing and clever novel sets off a depth charge of emotion and meaning.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE GRAMMARIANS … then take off on your own:
1. At the heart of this novel is the question of the self —how does each twin determine where her sister's identity ends and her own begins? Are they their own person or merely part of the other? What are their parents thoughts? What do you think: how would you answer those questions if the twins were to ask you?
2. Consider that the girls' names come from an anciet Greek myth in which Daphne, chased by Apollo, is transformed into the laurel tree. What is the symbolic significance that Cathleen Schine seems to be playing with by giving the twins those names?
3. Talk about the twins' earlier years, as youngsters: in what ways are they are alike, and in what ways are they different? When do their differences begin to appear?
4. The word twin is a Janus word, a single word that has opposite meanings. What are those meanings and how do those opposing definitions of "twin" apply to Daphne and Laurel?
5. The two are word lovers, but as adults they find themselves on opposing sides language. Talk about how each sees the use, rules, and boundaries of language. Is one approach more legitimate than the other? Whose side do you take in this argument?
6. Aside from language, describe the divisiveness between the two sisters as adults. Talk about the different paths their lives has taken. Do you admire one, or relate to one, more than the other?
7. (Follow-up to Question 5) Talk about your own relationship to language--how you use it and your appreciation of it. Do you treasure words in general...or particular words specifically? Think about the ways language can both unite us and separate us.
8. The present time of the novel takes place during the 1980s. If you lived through that era, does it feel familiar? Does Schine portray the time as you remember it? Why might the author have chosen the '80s as her setting?
9. Schine is clearly having her own fun with language. She heads each chapter with an unusual, even obsolete, word. In what way so the words relate to their chapters?
10. Do you know any identical twins or paternal twins who look nearly identical? If so, have they shared stories with you of what it's like to be a twin? Or, perhaps, you are a twin. Are you willing to share your experiences with your discussion group?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)