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The Grammarians is the eleventh novel from Cathleen Schine, and like the ten that preceded it, it is suffused with Schine’s trademark erudite wit. The novel traces the lives of identical twins, Daphne and Laurel, as they navigate womanhood both together and apart. From birth, the twins share an affinity for language, in their youth they devise a secret language between the two of them. As they grow, they further develop their bookish sensibilities with the help of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, which sits on an altar in their living room. The girls are incredibly precocious, and their beguiling fascination with linguistics frustrates their family members and alienates potential friends. Their mother, Sally, “admired her children from a baffled distance, pretty little girls, busy as birds, as alien. She worried about Daphne and Laurel, too, worried about how they would fit in, because they seemed to fit nowhere but with each other.” Their early closeness is inevitably followed by the crucial identity formation of young adulthood, and as the girls seek to carve out individual identities, they create friction.
The book begins with the Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language entry for the word ‘twin’, offering two definitions, “n. A couple, a pair, two,” and “v.t. & i. To part, sever, sunder, deprive (of)”. The novel explores the space between these two definitions, between togetherness and separateness, as Daphne and Laurel struggle to figure out which parts of themselves are truly their own. The rift between the sisters is a linguistic one, as Daphne becomes a prescriptivist, beginning as a copyeditor at a local paper. She then begins writing a grammar column that eventually makes its way onto the pages of the New York Times, where she is dubbed the “People’s Pedant”, and becomes somewhat of a grammar celebrity (Think Benjamin Dreyer or Mary Norris). While Daphne builds a successful career as a “language scold”, Laurel, who has quit her teaching job in favor of full time motherhood, becomes a descriptivist. Laurel falls in love with the changeability of language, how it is always shifting with the times, and her discovery of this living and breathing language pushes her toward poetry as a form. Both sisters achieve a degree of notoriety in the upscale Manhattan literati class, however their disagreements about linguistics and lifestyle rip at the seams of their relationship.
The battle surrounding linguistics is merely a surface level device for exploring the real issue in the sisterly relationship, which is identity. Each sister struggles to understand why the other one has made choices different from her own, and pushes against the inherent desire to compare themselves to the other. When Laurel decides to get a nose job, Daphne is incredulous, believing that Laurel deems their shared nose to be ugly, and thus Daphne to be ugly. Laurel is quick to create boundaries between herself and her sister, seeking selfhood in her marriage. She repeatedly tells her husband, “I can be myself with you,” or “I have a self with you.” As the sisters grow apart, their husbands grow closer in friendship, providing an interesting mirror for the sisterly relationship that initially brought them together. The novel is full of delightful bit players, including both of the twins’ husbands, their younger cousin Brian, Uncle Don and Aunt Paula, as well as Headmaster Gravit, Laurel’s former boss. These bit players, along with the parents, who carry a tad more emotional weight, are an excellent cast, one that bring lightness to the drama of the sisterly rift.
In this novel, Schine walks the line between playful and clever quite well, reveling in the beauty of language, much in the way that her central characters do. This is a novel for those of us who made lists of our favorite words as children, or who copy edit the paper as they read along. Its a witty but thoughtful reflection on sisterhood, identity, intellectualism, and uniqueness, which also feels unusually light in an era of novels most often described as “searing.” The characters feel lived-in and appropriately developed, and the thematic and formulaic incorporation of grammar and linguistics into the narrative is an absolute delight.