Review by New York Times Review
Daphnides has recently been imaginatively reincarnated - or at least likely name-checked - in a delightful new novel, "The Grammarians," by Cathleen Schine. He is no longer one man, but two sisters, Daphne and Laurel, identical twins who start their lives sharing everything (including, in a sense, their names, close Greek and Latin equivalents). The girls, children of a Larchmont accountant, are prodigies whose obsession with language begins when they're still infants in their cribs. As they wait for their bottles, they debate, through some mysterious form of twin communication, whether they can reasonably call their father "late" with their milk if his timing is at least consistent. They're not so much arguing the point as they are playing; words are their teething toys, their pets. When they cry, their mother can simply demand that they stop "this fracas," and they immediately cheer up, entranced by a circus of a word. Their twinness, their unusual linguistic brilliance - it can all be a bit much for their mother, who is relieved to find, as she listens to "My Fair Lady" with her toddler daughters one afternoon, that they didn't catch a certain literary reference: "She was sure she had not had a hot cup of coffee since the girls had been born, but at least, she thought, tapping her feet to the music, her children did not know who Keats was." Like the best of those books on language, Schine's novels - this is her 11th - are often as witty as they are erudite. A headmaster who is a bit player in "The Grammarians" shows up in one scene as a dinner guest, has a few drinks and "went on, quoting Shakespeare and Horace and, once, Cole Porter," a proxy, possibly, for the author herself. Schine takes her readers on deep philosophical dives but resurfaces with craft and humor; her tone is amused and amusing.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
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.--Maggie Taft Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. "Fugaciousoxterspromptuary.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 dangerouslythen 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 Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
