Could it be Ann Landers and Abigail van Buren on the cover of Catherine Schine’s new novel about twins with extraordinary linguistic skills? The picture of the two wide-eyed twin girls on the cover could be any set of famous twins, but Daphne and Laurel Wolfe are the stars of The Grammarians and they share some of the idiosyncracies of the real Pauline Esther and Esther Pauline Lederer (better known as Ann and Abby) in an entertaining story about sibling rivalry and the power of words.
The notion of being a twin is not an experience most of us have, but many have smatterings of twin envy. Have you ever wished to trade places with a doppelganger, especially on those days when you would rather be someone else than face the routine of life? Shakespeare did it and so do the Wolfe twins. And wouldn’t it be convenient to have a secret language like twin speak? Even Sally, Daphne and Laurel’s mother, cannot understand their private language.
Although I suffered through years of diagramming grammar with the good sisters who believed a dangling participle a mortal sin, and later studied linguist Noam Chomsky, I was sometimes intimidated by the twins. Each chapter begins with a word and its obscure dictionary definition; conversations sometimes include outlandish words. Readers could create their own list, just like the twins with words like fugacious, gloze, irenicon, to check them out later in the dictionary – but why bother.
The dictionary – Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition – enters the story early, offering a convenient source of reference as the girls grow, becoming a point of contention when their father dies, and finally bringing the twins back together in the end. This heavy tome placed on its stand, referred to as the “altar,” has all anyone needs to understand the story – “words, words, words, words” and the twins sometimes take it to bed with them.
As adults, the twins branch into different interpretations of language. Daphne becomes a grammar columnist, devoted to preserving the mother language, while Laurel leaves her teaching job to write poetry with hiphop tendencies. Both become well known in language circles, and they argue publicly about who has the correct slant toward words – suffering a time when they are not talking to each other – not unlike those famous sisters, Dear Abby and Dear Ann Landers.
Schine’s story is not just for the “bookish.” Her observations of family relationships, especially sisterly competition, offer a humorous and sometimes poignant tale. Luckily, it all turns out well in the end; real sisters are not always so forgiving.
Review of Schine’s The Three Weissmanns of Westport: https://nochargebookbunch.com/2010/05/11/the-three-weissmanns-of-westport/
Levy’s Hot Milk, short listed for the Man Booker Prize this year, focuses on the relationship of an English Rose, a hypochondriac mother and her daughter, Sophia, who uses her dutiful caring of her mother to avoid her own life. Sophie has an ABD (all but dissertation) in anthropology; she is constantly observing and internalizing. Frequently, I wanted to tell her to stop studying life around her and start living her own. 
In Schine’s They May Not Mean To, But They Do, the Weismanns of Westport reappear as the Bergmans of Manhattan, with an elderly dying father being cared for by his younger eighty-six year old wife. The scenes describing her caregiving may seem funny to some, but will strike a sad chord of familiarity for anyone who has been there. 
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