The Grammarians

by Cathleen Schine

"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 twin-ship 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.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2019

About the author

Cathleen Schine is the author of The New Yorkers, The Love Letter, and The Three Weissmanns of Westport 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.

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cuckoo over word play…then a dive to 3.5!

If you’re a word freak, you will probably adore this novel about identical twins who live to play with words! I was jazzed for most of the show, but I was eyeballing the exit as I watched the final act, which was the whole last quarter of the book.

And it’s not just word play, it’s grammar! Twins who love grammar? Are you kidding me? I was in pig heaven (whatever that means). This was an editor’s dream, I tell you! I was thrilled when I heard serious talk about sentence structure and grammatical mistakes. Personally, I’ve always wanted to get all buddy-buddy with people who understand the beauty of gerunds, and here I could. I felt nerdy as hell, giggling while I hit some fascinating grammar rule. It’s not the kind of book where I could read sentences aloud and make people swoon over them (although I wanted to try, lol), but I was having a ball. It was 5 stars all the way, baby…until it wasn’t.

Okay, first, the stuff that found its way to the Joy Jar:

-Word play, idioms, grammar tips and peeves—the absolute focus on words. I was tickled, I was thrilled. Did you ever think about how “lesbian woman” is redundant? Or how weird it is to think about a house having wings? I lapped all this up like a thirsty dog at its water bowl.

-One day, the sisters switch jobs. Man, was that fun!

-I softened a little at the end and started to enjoy it again. Very brief reprieve, though.

-Fascinating lives of identical twins. Yeah, I know it’s fiction, but the author obviously researched identical twin-dom. What a kick the twins were! A fun quote:

“Identical twins, dressed in identical outfits—are they half or double?”

This is going to make the Joy Jar section look longer than it should be, but I have to add these quotes that slayed me:

“Words and students, Laurel thought—they could be recalcitrant, out of order, trying to slip by without being noticed. But once you got them working together, unobtrusive and efficient, it was beautiful.”

“Grammar is good. I mean ethically good. If you think of all these words just staggering around, grammar is their social order, their government.”

“Sometimes, okay, a word needs to be led. Or nudged. Or dragged. Or squeezed a little. To get it to the spot where it belongs.”

And my favorite, because gerunds (one of my favorite parts of speech) can be a pain, I know, makes me smile in my nerdy wordy way:

“I come home from a hard day of possessive gerund insertion, and you’re cooking eggs in an omelet pan and humming?”

Complaint Board

I can’t believe I had so many nits; sadly, I did.

-Point-of-view changes out of nowhere. It they were intentional, they didn’t work.

-Occasional stream-of consciousness runs seemed over-indulgent, and word associations too obvious or boring. Seldom happened, however.

-Repeated info. Several times, paragraphs appeared twice, with slightly different wording. This kind of sloppiness is becoming a pet peeve of mine.

-Toward the end, there’s an obnoxious and long lecture on linguistics and word origins. It read like a textbook. This is when the book started its nose-dive and I REALLY got turned off.

-Dictionary entries: Each chapter opened with one. They hadn’t bugged me—mostly I ignored them—but when I got to the horrible lecture, I realized, “Hey, the truth is I HATE these dictionary entries. Boring!” Sometimes it takes a big ugly to realize you had been blind to earlier uglies.

-Sloppy plot, wrong characters. In the last quarter of the book, the shiny star sisters were dropped and we were thrown into the lives of minor characters. Where oh where did the twins and their goings-on go? I missed them! I wanted to know what they were doing, and I wanted them to interact again. The other characters were boring, and because their stories came at the end, I wasn’t invested in them.

-There’s a very short bit where the infant twins talk (like adults). It was clever, but it didn’t seem to fit in with the reality-based story. It threw me for a loop for a few minutes, as I tried to figure out point of view.

-The story was summed up too fast. I wanted dialogue between the sisters, not such abrupt fast forwarding of their lives.

A friend of mine (also an ex-editor) read the book and loved it through and through. She wasn’t bothered by the dictionary entries or the horrible lecture. She pointed out there were mini-lectures throughout, so why wasn’t I complaining about them, huh? LOL, I hadn’t even noticed them! I was only jolted when that long, academic treatise so rudely interrupted the story.

If you’re a word freak or editor, you might want to check this one out. Maybe, like my friend, you’ll find the whole thing luscious. Me? I was disappointed. And while I’m at it, I must say I hated the cover.

Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy.

P.S. A funny coincidence: One day when I was reading the book, I had to drive kids to a swimming lesson. I told them, with fake mellowness, as I was turning around in a MacDonald’s parking lot, that if we miss the first five minutes of class, it wouldn’t be “the end of the world.” (Of course, directionally challenged person that I am, I was completely lost and was trying to act like it was no big deal. It WAS a big deal; I was anxious beyond belief.) The 7-year old said, “Really? I hope it’s NOT the end of the world!” The 10-year old, wanting to be both informative and reassuring, said, “Well someday it will be the end of the world, but it will be millions of years from now.” Later that day, I read that the twins analyze the phrase “the end of the world.” They did not talk about millions of years; their take was that the world ends when you die. Hm…true. I love it when books and life intersect! (And not to leave you hanging—yes, miraculously I found my way and we were only 7 minutes late, but who’s counting. Pshew.)

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twin, n. A couple; a pair;two
Twin, v.t. To part, sever, sunder, deprive of.

And do a matching set of twins are born. Vibrant red hair, a precocious pair, who take to language early and never really stop from it being fascinating. Their closeness even into intimadated their mother, their was scarcely a thought that between them went unshared. What one knew, the other did. They even made of their own language. Words were important, are important and how it is used matter. Lauren and Daphne, one thought nothing would ever come between them. Until something did. Sisterhood, the things that bring them closer, and what can tear them apart.

This book spans decades, following the family, the girls as they grow, start families and careers of their own. The author does a terrific job mixing humor, and there is a great deal of it, with the tragedies life seems periodically to throw our way. If you are a lover of words, care about their usage, grammar, this is the book for you. Words get top billing here, and the girls float through the many different ways they are used. Loved the characters, loved the writing, loved the word and definition listed before each chapter. It is a wonderful book about life and that shows the importance of words, their ability to heal and hurt, as well as their importance throughout history. Definitely the right book at the right time.

"Grammar makes you respect words, every individual word. You make sure it's in the place where it feels the most comfortable and does its job best."

"This is what words do, she realizes. They call out from the page and force you to listen. No, they allow you to listen."

[Kathryn S (Metaphors and Miscellanea) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Grammarians is a tale of sisterhood and a love letter to the English language. Cute, quirky, and highly readable, this book was a good deal of fun, especially for someone as word-obsessed as I am.

The blurb on this book is rather misleading, so I’m providing my own here. As children, Daphne and Laurel—red-haired identical twins—speak to each other in a pidgin language of their own creation, much to the bafflement of those around them. Their greatest delight comes from poring over an old dictionary their father brought home, hunting for interesting words and carrying them over into everyday life, while engaging in all sorts of shenanigans and thriving on the excitement of daily life. The Grammarians chronicles the lives of these two girls as they grow into adulthood, start careers, get married, and raise families, drifting further apart with time, but never losing their love for all things linguistic…or their innate connection with each other.

As one might expect, where the book really excels is its use of language. There is a lot of wry humor, which is quite fitting for a tale of two sisters who thrive on words and wordplay. In a nod to the girls’ obsession with odd words and the contents of their old dictionary, each chapter heading is—what else?—a dictionary entry for a word that relates to the chapter. Often, the words are highly obscure, archaic, or printed alongside a less-common definition for them. Always, they are fascinating, and my personal vocabulary has definitely grown by at least a few words.

The Grammarians also succeeds wildly in its portrayal of the complexities of sisterhood, individuality, and feminism. Daphne and Laurel frequently butt heads over the importance of career, the importance of family, the importance of where you live and what you do and who you do it with. When one is dissatisfied with her appearance, the other takes offense, knowing that she looks exactly the same, and therefore she, too, is “ugly” to her sister. The two clash over issues of what you “should” do versus what you want to do, differences that ultimately escalate into shaping the girls’ opinions of language as a whole—one becomes a prescriptivist; the other, a descriptivist. Although they love each other fiercely, they are often at odds with one another, sometimes to such an extreme that their friends and family fear they will never reunite—and both girls’ thoughts and opinions on these fronts are exquisitely rendered, an all-too-real depiction of siblings trying to define themselves apart from each other.

There are a few quibbles I have, of course. For one, there are the frequent shifts in narration throughout the book—always in third person, but sometimes filtered through the mind of either Laurel or Daphne, sometimes through one of their husbands, sometimes through their cousin Brian, and sometimes through their mother. Getting this broader view of the sisters’ lives is nice, especially seeing it through the eyes of the men they marry, but sometimes it comes across as odd; Brian, in particular, is a great character, but his role in the twins’ lives is minimal, and usually he just gets a quick observation of them here or there. I was also disappointed at a fairly large moment that ended up being told from their mother’s perspective, which irked me, because the story isn’t really about her. There are also shifts in tense, from past to present to future and back again. Though a bit jarring, most of these make sense; my only complaint is that the end of the book takes place as one long prediction, written in future tense. I won’t say what that prediction includes, but it is fairly long and detailed, and it wasn’t as satisfying as I would have liked.

As a whole, this is a quick, fun read for the logophile in your life. Despite its occasional flaws in pacing and narrative choices, it paints a vivid portrait of two memorable women. It will make you laugh, and it will make you feel smarter (or perhaps dumber, when they start casually tossing out complaints about very specific grammatical issues that you don’t really think about, but now will never forget…).

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an eARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Kitty Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the summary, we have what seems to be a rousing set-up for a biting grammatical comedy: "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 twin-ship 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."

Unfortunately, I think this book has been mismarketed, to its detriment. For one, Laurel does not become a poet until about 175 pages in, which is quite a long time for something that is framed as the central problem. For another, it's dead inaccurate. Though the twins do squabble over the dictionary, it's framed in the summary as the starting point for the action and conflict, when it's literally in the last fifth of the book that this is even mentioned. Even then, the rift starts before that. Which is absolutely fine for what it should have been marketed as: a family drama with twins who are enamored of words.

There's nothing wrong with family dramas, and I imagine they appeal to people who like that sort of thing; hiding it under the guise of a comedy of words only manages to attract people like me, who do not like that sort of thing at all.

Quite frankly, I didn't even find this all that biting or clever. The twins have fun with a few homonyms and throw in some grammatical jargon, but if you were expecting Nabakov-like wordplay, look elsewhere. The grade-school book Frindle did a better and more entertaining job of explaining prescriptionism vs descriptionism. This book touched lightly upon the class structures that grammar rules can tip its hat to, but without going into any meaningful depth.

The writing also frustrated me. Schine has some truly great descriptive powers, with a light touch that seems to know exactly where to place a simile for greatest effect. The problem came when looking at the book at a whole. The prose recklessly careens off of first, second, and third points of view, and tenses flit with wild abandon near the end.

It reminds me of the conceit of using present tense: we are told that it communicates no one is safe! That anything might happen!

But quite frankly, good writing (in any tense) can do that, and present tense never actually works, does it? I start mentally changing it to past tense, when I don't just chuck it into the contrarian grammarian's bin in my mental library, and at best, I can just blissfully ignore it.

Likewise, I imagine that the conceit here is that it's so playful! Using all the point-of-views available! But what sounds good in academic theory rarely stands the test of practical reading. The ping-pong effect of reading about the twins in third person, then suddenly reading second-person wherein we are supposed to imagine ourselves as a twin, just flat-out did not work. Or the time when Daphne's column began in first-person, with zero notice to the reader, who suddenly is wondering why on earth the point of view has shifted yet again.

The ending was rushed and unsatisfying, seemingly drawing everything up without actually resolving anything.

If you're interested in family dramas, you might give it a try, but otherwise, it's a miss for me.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this work for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review through the GoodReads giveaway program.

[Donna Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh hell yes. This charming little book had me on the first page, and when it was over, I was sorry to be done. Big thanks go to Net Galley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the review copy. This is the first time I have read anything Schine has written, but it cannot possibly be the last. You can buy it now.

We start in the dark; we start behind bars. Happily, it’s because our protagonists are infants, and they’re in a crib. As light streams through the open door, we enter the lives of Daphne and Laurel, who are identical twins. They are brilliant, and they are in love with the written word from the get-go.

At the outset this story seems like a romp, but its success is in the details. As children we see the girls move in lock step; the first one out of the womb is the alpha, and they both understand this. But as they grow up and define their places in the world, there’s tension and at times, competition. In order to develop relationships and families separately, they have to pull away from each other, and when two people are very close, the only way they can become independent is through a hard break. Schine is absolutely consistent in the development of her characters, and this also includes their intellectual gifts.

One aspect of fiction that grates on my nerves is when I see a gifted child protagonist that’s developed in an amateurish way. Some writers want to use a child in their writing, but don’t have any clue about the qualities inherent in a child at the age they have chosen, and so they build giftedness into the character as an excuse, so that they can provide the child with adult-level dialogue and dodge the stages of childhood. Schine doesn’t do that. Instead, she creates completely believable little geniuses that are nevertheless coping with the growing pains, developmental milestones, attitudes and frequent self-centeredness that characterize children and adolescents. Her care and skill result in characters that are entirely believable. I like the side characters a lot also.

The wit and sass shown by Daphne and Laurel as they indulge in their secret twin language as well as word play using standard English is original and makes me laugh out loud more than once, but as they grow older, both twins encounter broader philosophical issues that connect language with class, ethnicity, and other variables, and they must find their way through the ethical slough. They don’t choose the same paths, and their anger and pain toward one another is visceral. But in the end…well. You’ll have to find that out for yourself.

This book is highly recommended to those that have twins in their lives; those that love the English language; and those that want to howl with laughter. However, I don’t recommend it to anyone whose first language isn’t English.

I read several books at a time, and while I was reading this one, it became the reward for finishing a chapter in a less rewarding read. You, however, can reward yourself right now by ordering a copy.

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always been a big fan of what Cathleen Schine has to offer: Comfort reads that are smart, funny, and well-written. (She puts me in mind of Meg Wolitzer, but a bit on the lighter side.) I've read three of Schine's other novels and all three have been 4-star reads for me. The Grammarians, then, should have been an obvious slam dunk: It's about identical twins, one of whom is a a writer, the other of whom is a copy editor. I'm an identical twin AND a copy editor! How could this go wrong?

Well, it went a little wrong. Too many points of view, for one—why not just focus on the twins? And I found the relationship between the twins to be a little unrealistic, hard to relate to. The beginning, when the twins graduated from college and moved to seedy 1970s Manhattan, was fun, but as they got older things got a little slower and a little stodgier. Ultimately this was enjoyable, but not as enjoyable as my past experiences with Schine.

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.

[Chavelli Sulikowska · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a lot of fun. An unusual premise, twin sisters who share a unique affinity with words and language that both binds them together and propels them apart as they grow up. The story follows them from birth right through to their old age, at each stage tracking their experiences of life through language.

Very well written, Schine has a sharp wit and a keen sense of humour. I found myself smiling, breaking into a giggle - surely a sign of a good read. I am not a twin, but my dad is (identical) so I am familiar with the unusual parculiarities of twin kinship and I think she really taps into the nuances between the twins themselves and their relationship with the rest of the family and the outsiide world.

This was a great book to start winding up my year of reading. I would definitely read more of Schine's work in the future.

[JimZ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time thinking about how to review this book. It was only 2.5 -3 stars for me. And I know I will once again run up against positive reviews. I know this because I only picked out this book because I subscribe to the New York Review of Books (NYRB) and Alan Hollinghurst over the course of two pages gave it a very good review. So I wanted to read it. I went into reading the book with a positive bias.

This novel is about two identical twins, Laurel and Daphne, who from their birth are obsessed with language. That is an overriding theme of the book. The book is 258 pages in length. For the first 200 pages (78% of the book to be precise) I am reading along and the book is enjoyable although nothing much of note seems to be happening. But that’s OK because I like the twins…we learn about them and grow to like them and care about them throughout their childhood and adolescence and into young adulthood. I like their parents, Arthur and Sally and their Uncle Don. And I like Schine’s writing style. I think if she had continued along her way with nothing much of note happening I would have probably come closer to 3.5-4 stars…but saying the book was a bit thin on a punchline…but the writing more than earned the book 3-4-4 stars. But no. Around page 200 which to me is nearly the ending of the book Schine throws in a monkey wrench into their relationship. To me it came out of the blue (although in fairness to Schine we are told in a 1 ½ page first chapter of the novel that the two sisters have not talked in years, and I wondered what had caused this rift but after a certain number of pages forgot about it…like 198 pages to be precise).

There’s an explanation for the monkey wrench which to me isn’t convincing enough to me for why it would break their bond. ☹ And then in the last 10 pages of the book, we learn something else and if I reveal that then I have SPOILED the story line. So I won’t do that. 😊 And I did say I liked the book so it’s only a difference of one star. It’ll be interested as always in reading other GR reviewer’s take on the book. And I wouldn’t discourage people from reading the book. The book and what people think of it would probably make for an interesting book club discussion.

Allan Hollinghurst’s review is in the November 17 2019 issue of the New York Review of Books. Positive blurbs of the book on back cover are from Elizabeth Strout, Sigrid Nunez (Natl Book Award winning author of “The Friend”), and Benjamin Dreyer.
Here are other reviews:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/754847...
https://www.newyorker.com/recommends/...

I note that Cathleen Schine has written the Introduction for a NYRB re-issue of The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (originally issued in 1922). I should also note she has written 11 previous novels spanning the period from 1983 to 2019.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this ARC in a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

“The Grammarians” follows the lives of precocious twin girls who share the “special bond” characteristic of identical siblings, which for them is a shared secret language. This broadens to a mutual romance with words, fueled by their father’s purchase of a massive English dictionary. The tome, perched on a wooden stand, is given pride of place, where the girls obsessively pore over it.

As adults, there is no juicy competition or professional rivalry between them for “Who’s the Greatest Wordsmith of Them All” as the PR blurbs would lead one to believe. The core of the book is simply a play-by-play of the sisters’ normal need to individuate and delimit their twin-ship bond, and the paths they lurch along to get there. The promise of acrimonious literary battles is the hook used to entice biblio- and linguaphiles to read it (and why I vied to win an ARC). But alas, nothing like this ever really happens. Neither do any dysfunctional family of origin issues emerge which could give legs to their so-called sibling rivalry. So, what gives?

Daphne, younger by 17 minutes, grows into a burningly ambitious, self-righteous, disagreeable adult. Those critical minutes are apparently the root of her animus toward Laurel, the elder twin. As a child she felt consigned to trailing in her sister’s exuberant shadow. Relentlessly driven to achieve, Daphne becomes a well-known grammarian via a newspaper column--a witty but acerbic “Miss Manners” of English language usage. Her unyielding narcissism and smug use of words as weapons in her relationships makes her a most unpleasant, strident and tiresome one-note creature. She continues up the ladder of fame with no hindrance, interference, or competition whatsoever from Laurel, who has, ironically, effectively tip-toed into the shadows. Um, so where’s the beef?

For all of Laurel’s youthful zest and primacy, the supposed bane of Daphne’s life, she grows into an unaccountably colorless and insipid adult, languid and rudderless through the bulk of the book. Marriage, motherhood, and a default kindergarten teaching job push her earlier passion for words deep into the closet. That is, until p. 175 (out of 258), when she awakens from her self-imposed stupor to realize she is frustrated and bored. She discovers a unique creative locus involving…Yes! Words! And—Voila!--becomes an acclaimed poet! Daphne, uncharitable and seething with jealousy, takes every opportunity to disparage Laurel and pronounce her work derivative and “illegitimate,” which comes off as pathetic attempts to keep her chronically insecure ego lifted up by putting her sister and (not really) rival down.

When their father dies (so late in the book that the reader knows the dénouement will be playing out at breakneck speed), the real--and only--tussle finally erupts over Who Deserves to Get the Sacred Dictionary.

Please.

The infatuation-with-language-run-amok theme was creative and unique, not to mention a sure bet for readers like myself to scoop up. Unfortunately, it was a rather overambitious premise on which to hang what amounts to an awkward coming of age story of twins attempting to untether from one another and find a significant place in the world of words.

Now, don’t take my word for it. This non-accolade currently sits among a sea of very positive reviews, and likely will continue to be in the minority. It just goes to show that “One person’s meat…”

[Robert Blumenthal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words to describe this novel: delightful, clever, witty, intelligent, droll, and, finally, moving. I have been a fan of Cathleen Schine for some time now, starting with her Rameau's Niece from the early 1990s. The Grammarians is like a finely aged wine, written by a skilled novelist at the height of her craft. It is a novel of twins trying to find their independence as well as how we humans use language.

Daphne and Laurel are very precocious twins growing up in Westchester, NY. They become obsessed with language at a very early age, and they grow up as an almost single unit, filled with love for each other. As they age and become their own selves through marriage and creating their own families, they become estranged. The author uses the metaphor of words and language and its usage as a means to show the split between these twins--one becoming a pedantic, the other marveling in the common usage of our English language. Daphne, the pedantic, becomes a copy editor and a columnist who writes about the "proper" use of English, while Laurel becomes first a teacher then a writer of short stories and poetry that embody very common use of English.

The author writes with very strong humor--I laughed quite a bit at this story. She has many clever turns of phrase and seems to have fun playing with the language. The plot is not overly compelling, but I became very involved in these characters and their relationships. There are a couple of chapters where the author becomes a bit analytical and intellectual, but the passages are brief and don't detract from the lovely flow of the novel.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. It’s a decent book, easy to read. But it’s falsely advertised. The story makes it seem like most of the book deals with this fight between the two sisters when about 2/3rd deals with them growing up and just naturally drifting apart... the ending was a bit unrealistic as well... if it had been advertised better I’d have given it 4 stars. It’s more about twins who lose sight of the other

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a problem getting into this, and it didn't work for me.

[verbava · Rating 4 out of 5]

дві сестри-близнючки, обидві руді, обидві редакторки, закохані у слова і в один конкретний словник. але одна прескриптивістка, а друга – дескриптивістка.

звісно, в реальному житті так категорично не трапляється. ти можеш бути скільки завгодно прескриптивісткою, але казитися від того, що обіймати посаду можна, а гарно на ній виглядати – ні. чи там страшенно спокійною дескриптивісткою, та ловити своє око на смиканні від "злодія" замість "лиходія" і "товаришувати" замість "супроводжувати". проте роман – не життя, і тому в ньому є не тільки смачнючі крайнощі, а й (майже) непримиренний конфлікт, що з них виростає. плюс обрамлення зі словника для шанувальників красивих структур.

це історія не так про редагування, як про сім'ю, але хоч якась репрезентація. бо редакторів у художній літературі й загалом публічній культурі украй мало (хоча де ця культура без них була б). про письменників, перекладачів і критиків пишуть романи; письменникам, перекладачам і критикам дають нагороди; ба, нагороди дають навіть конкретним перекладачкам, які плутають пруссів із прусаками, but i digress. а тут – рахат-лукум для редакторського серця. 

[Joe Oser · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about two (one set of?) precocious twins. They have always been interested in words for their own (the words’) sake and their career choices and eventual estrangement revolve around their philological preferences. One sister prefers a living grammar in the writer’s service, the other prefers more stringent grammatical rules which, arguably, hamstring the writer. Oddly, I couldn’t see the correlation between each twin’s personality and her grammatical destiny. Oddly, because I am sure the author intended such a match. If she doesn’t, what is the meaning of the book? I am not a female nor a twin, but the characters had no life for me. None of them. Because of this I had no lump in my throat following the twins’ and their family members’ life trajectories. Perhaps partly due to truncated story lines for the family members and even for the twins, I did not find the characters real or particularly interesting. Finally, from this respected author writing a book about people in love with or at least fascinated by words, I was hoping for ‘gorgeous prose’ or at least provocative writing but found neither. And after the effusive reviews I felt very disappointed. And cheated.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of the lesser reviews of this book mention its summary was misleading, or wrong. They claim it isn't about sisters who have a rift, instead it's a story about sisters and how they eventually grow apart. The separation isn't the focus, the focus is the relationship that was lost. This was a beautiful, funny story about a realistic relationship between two sisters and their lives together and their lives apart. It's likely going to be one of my favorite books of the year. If you like stories about the importance of words and language, it might be on your list, too.

[Aria · Rating 1 out of 5]

---- Disclosure: I received this book for free from Goodreads. ---- Dnf at ~ p. 85, b/c it just wasn't interesting. That's really about all I can say about it. I'm into words & odd characters, but unfortunately nothing here clicked for me. Don't even have suggestions for how to make it better, as there's not anything in particular that I noticed wasn't working. The whole thing just fell flat, so I'm moving on.

[Faith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Women's fiction. Mild family drama. Did not match blurb.

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started skimming and gave up. What I read was 2 star at the most. It sounded like the sort of book I’d love. The twins voices seemed unrealistic and uninteresting.

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve had a very mixed experience with the author thus far. I’ve discovered her while reading her latest(prior to this) book, which was an absolutely lovely introduction, but it didn’t hold extend to her earlier work. Seems to me that she’s improved tremendously over the years and now her talent really shines when it comes to a very specific sort of subtly humorous New York stories. This is one such story about two redheaded twin sisters united and later divided by their love, no, more like ardent passion for words. Slender as this book is, it covers a lot of territory, following the twins and their families over decades, practically birth to death story, and as such it also covers NYC in all its reincarnations over the decades. The twins are very entertaining, singularly so for their idiosyncrasies and the way the very development of their individual selves mirrors their love of words or vice versa. Inseparable at first, united by so much more than a quirk of DNA, they slowly become their own persons, find their own families and eventually the very words they love pit them on the opposing sides of the spectrum with one twin becoming a strict grammarians and the other adapting a more freestyle approach to language. In the end even familial ties might not be enough to span the great linguistic divide…or maybe not. The ending, that does the omniscient narrator thing to perfection, suggest possibilities. Because love is a multifaceted thing be it love of words or people, but it seldom fails to be larger than the sum of its components. So yeah, a very enjoyable story, not laugh out loud funny, more along the lines of understated comedy, but it manages to be light without being in any way stupid, which was very nice. The author seems to do more nuances with older characters and so everyone gets more interesting as they age and in this story everyone ages quite a lot. Plus for anyone who loves words (maybe not as much as the twins, but enough) this book is a sheer joy to read. Very entertaining, fun, quick read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[La Tonya Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book about family and words. Laurel and Daphne Wolfe are identical red-haired twins born to Sally and Arthur Wolfe in Larchmont, NY. Their bond as twins was strong. So
indestructible they came up with their own language to communicate between the two of them. So powerful their mother at times felt left out of the collective.

When their father brought home a enormous dictionary with thin pages and tiny small print with its own altar, their world changed into a colossal maze of words that would follow them the rest of their lives. Meet Laurel kindergarten school teacher turn book publisher. Meet Daphne weekly columnist writer about standard English and its misuse. A very good read.

Quotes:

They girls began to sway together to the left, then the right, then again to the left.
"Jesus, what are they doing now?"
"Swaying," Laurel said.
"From side to side," Daphne added.
Their parents burst out laughing, but Uncle Don left the room.

"Corny' is a funny word, isn't it? she said. "I think it might be the least romantic word in the world."

Then she asked Sally if she was insufferable, and Sally assured her that she was just as sufferable as she had always been.

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars - Twins that love words. What's not to love? I really wanted to enjoy this one more than I did. It was decent but not at all what I was expecting. The language part of the book (you would think it would be the major part, given the title) was really a background troupe. It didn't fully fit with the rest of the story, and the big fight as advertised in the summary was only a very small part of the book. I enjoyed the exploration of sisterhood and the grammatical/wordy fun, I was just underwhelmed.

[Martha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the reviews and the blurbs promoting this as a witty book, filled with word play. It is actually a pretty dull story about a set of twins growing up and apart. So dull I couldn't be bothered finishing it.

[debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyce and Diane S wrote wonderful reviews for this title

[Cookie M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes a book hits you where you live, and you don't even realize it is speaking to you until the last line. "The Grammarians" did this to me. I just finished it. I am shaking and my eyes are leaking.
As this is an ARC I cannot quote the last line, but it gives me hope, in this time of broken relationships in my own family, relationships which have broken for such a stupid reason, the one which has divided our whole country.
This is not what causes the sisters in "The Grammarians" to break with each other, but in a way it is a result of what happens in a close family when cracks of individuality appear where they have never been allowed or encouraged before.
Laurel and Daphne are joined as identical twins by their love of words. They are driven apart by their beliefs on the used of grammar.
If you think that is a ridiculous premise, give me a call, and we will talk about the word my former best friend sister decided to use as an excuse to cut me from her life.
Thank you, Cathleen Schine, for the hopeful ending of this book, one I will share with my mother, a sentiment that leads me to believe that family closeness can survive ideological differences.

I received this book free from FSG Books in exchange for an honest review.

[Aaron Broadwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something about this book didn't quite break through for me. I think the narration never let me identify fully with the characters, and their adult alienation from each other didn't seem to be very well motivated.

From a structural point of view, I liked the idea of rival twins, who begin united by language and latter split due to language. I also liked the dictionary definitions that start each chapter.

But the loves, hates, and passions of the book didn't seem to me like the passions of real people; rather they seemed like the roles given to fictional characters.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. I really wanted to like this book but mostly I admired it. Clever. But it didn't pick up for me until about 50% through. That said, I v. much liked the second half and even more so, the ending [though it was a tad rushed]. I found it uneven--as I do Cathleen Schine's work.

[Toni · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out really good but couldn’t hold my interest throughout. Felt like a chore to finish. Disappointed because I had high hopes for this book. Oh well, la dee dah, la dee dah.

[Boxofdelights · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love words, and I love stories about female friendship, especially this kind, where each friend looks to the other as a mirror, to help her figure out who she is, and as a window, to help her figure out what the world is. These two are twins, and they're both the kind of child who makes friends with a dictionary and tries to take it to bed in order to have someone to talk to.

In school, both Laurel and Daphne often had to clarify that they were themselves and not their sister. "No," they would say, "I'm the other one."
"I'm the other one," Daphne said in third grade when a little boy who had a crush on Laurel stuck paste in her hair. "I'm the other one."
"I don't care," the boy said, but he ran away to the far end of the playground.
"I'm the other one," Laurel said to the cafeteria lady who knew Daphne's love of Sloppy Joes and was ladling an extra gelatinous spoonful onto her hamburger bun.
The cafeteria lady said, "Oh! Well, you enjoy your meal, too, dear."
"How can we both be the other one?" Daphne asked Laurel.
They looked up "other" in the dictionary.
The entry was surprisingly long. "Other" was an adjective that meant one of two. It was usually preceded by a demonstrative or possessive word. Daphne liked the idea of a demonstrative word, imagining the word hugging and kissing "other," generally making a spectacle of itself, until their father explained that a demonstrative word meant, simply, a word like "this" or "that."

Then Schine opens the next chapter demonstrating two meanings of "every other":

Uncle Don and Aunt Paula and their little boy, Brian, came for dinner every other Sunday; and every other Sunday, Laural and Daphne and their parents went to Uncle Don and Aunt Paula and Brian's house for dinner.

I was thinking that Schine reminds me of Laurie Anderson, the way she plays with overloaded words; then one character used "O Superman" on his answering machine. When Laurel starts making poetry out of grammar samples taken from letters people wrote to the War Department, I was hoping for a reference to John Cale's "Cordoba". That didn't show up, but still, Cathleen Schine speaks my language.

[Mehrsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's well written and I love the quirky fascination with words and even the debate about descriptivist or proscriptive grammar and how the two girls' personalities changed over time. I was absorbed by the characters enough to make it a good read, but the plot points felt a bit weak and the story was not all that memorable.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, and it was off to a good start. What could be more charming than identical twin girls with a penchant for word play? Their devotion to each other as they developed language ability, perplexing their adult relatives, was adorable. But as they grew into adults they were not adorable, but pretty darn annoying.