Cathleen Schine. (2019). The Grammarians: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cathleen Schine. 2019. The Grammarians: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cathleen Schine, The Grammarians: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

Cathleen Schine. The Grammarians: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

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1. • value: literary fiction
2. • value: sisters
3. • value: English language
4. • value: sisterhood
5. • value: Comedy
6. • value: sibling rivalry
7. • value: womens fiction
8. • value: Women Authors
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14. • value: Women Writers
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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Schine, Cathleen
   • bioText: Cathleen Schine is the author of The Grammarians, The Three Weissmanns of Westport, and The Love Letter, among other novels. She has contributed to the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, and the New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
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2019-09-03T00:00:00-04:00

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The Grammarians

fullDescription

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.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
   • content: "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."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Schine's sparkling latest [is] both a fizzy exploration of the difficulties of separating from one's closest ally and a quirky meditation on the limits of language for understanding the world."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Ann Levin, Associated Press
   • content: "Captivating . . . written with the tender precision and clarity of a painting by Vermeer . . . [a] wry and elegant novel."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Susan Dominus, The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "A delightful new novel . . . Schine takes her readers on deep philosophical dives but resurfaces with craft and humor; her tone is amused and amusing."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award–winning author of The Friend
   • content: "The mother of the beguilingly unusual twins whose lives unfold in this sublime comic novel could not adore them more than I do. A singular delight for anyone who has ever marveled at the quirks and beauties and frustrations of English grammar, and a fascinating portrait of the passions and dramas of fierce familial love."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     July 29, 2019
     Schine’s sparkling latest (following They May Not Mean to, but They Do) has a prickly underside that keeps it anchored to the daily stresses of family life. The tale of identical twins follows word-drunk Laurel and Daphne from their infancy, when they develop a language of their own, into a childhood in the 1960s during which they become obsessed with reading the dictionary, on through their diverging paths as a poet and a grammar columnist, and into an old age in which their differing attitudes toward words tear them apart. Along the way, they baffle their parents, frighten their psychiatrist uncle Don, and intrigue their cousin Brian. Eventually, each marries a mild, tolerant man, leaving the husbands to become easier friends than their high-strung wives. Both a fizzy exploration of the difficulties of separating from one’s closest ally and a quirky meditation on the limits of language for understanding the world, the novel moves slowly through the first couple decades of the twins’ lives and then more briskly through the rest. Though the work is deliberately paced, the 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.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2019
     Laurel and Daphne, identical-twin wordsmiths with fiery red hair, are this novel's protagonists, but language is its heart. Schine (They May Not Mean to, but They Do, 2016) coyly titles each chapter with a word and definition, and then there is the dictionary the twins' father brings home one night. The giant book entwines the girls as children, as they peel through its pages, and later, when they're grown and their father has died, tears them apart with a fight over who will inherit it. From the twins' infanthood to old age, words are their bread and butter. Even more than a nose job, which makes Laurel's face ever so slightly different than her sister's, words distinguish them. Both characters become writers?Daphne a prescriptivist, instructing on the rules of language in a popular newspaper column, and Laurel a descriptivist, penning poetry that creatively mines the way language is used. But 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from July 1, 2019
     A literary twin experiment: At the heart of this comic novel about supersmart, language-obsessed sisters are profound questions about how close two human beings can be. "Was there anyone who understood anyone else as well as she and Daphne understood each other? There was no need to explain or justify wanting to climb linoleum M.C. Escher stairs to live in a tenement their grandparents had probably moved out of the minute they could, because Daphne already understood. Understanding is love, Laurel thought." The darling redheaded twin daughters of Arthur and Sally Wolfe of Larchmont, New York, Laurel and Daphne invent their own language while still in the crib, then embrace English with a passion that lasts the rest of their lives. "Fugacious...oxters...promptuary....They played with the words as if they were toys...involving them in intrigues of love and friendship and bitter enmity." Elegant chapters, each headed with a classic definition from Samuel Johnson's dictionary, follow the identical pair through childhood to that post-collegiate tenement apartment where the first rumblings of what will come to be known as the Rift are heard. By the time of their double wedding, Laurel and Daphne are more aware of their differences than their similarities. As 17-minutes-younger Daphne becomes a famous language columnist and 17-minutes-older Laurel becomes a kindergarten teacher, then a mom, the power between them shifts dangerously--then real hostilities are launched during a disagreement about the relative importance of Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Chicago Manual of Style. As we've come to expect in 10 previous novels, Schine's (They May Not Mean To, but They Do, 2016, etc.) warmth and wisdom about how families work and don't work are as reliable as her wry humor, and we often get both together: "Michael suspected Larry was as smart as anyone, just not paying attention. Like a Galapagos tortoise, he had no need to pay attention. He had no predators. He was protected by an expansive carapace of good nature, money, and family status." This impossibly endearing and clever novel sets off a depth charge of emotion and meaning.

     COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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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...

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