Luscious Literature

By Liz Wagner
Collegian Editor
September 11, 2008

This Week’s Book: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xialolu Guo

Despite a combined six semester foray into the world of Spanish between high school and my freshman year here at La Salle, I have never been able to grasp the language. While I was crawling through double object pronouns my roommate was orchestrating three page essays about her future, all grammatically immaculate.

So when I first picked up Xialolu Guo’s A Concise Chinese- English Dictionary for Lovers, I instantly sympathized with the narrator’s plight. Zhuang is a young girl from China whose family sends her to London to learn English. Here I am, barely capable of stringing two sentences about the weather together, and this girl is dumped into another country with only a basic English vocabulary.

And that’s what makes this novel so interesting. Written from Z’s point of view (she shortens Zhuang upon learning that no one in Europe can pronounce her name), the story is written journal-style in disjointed English. The prologue is a short burst of simple sentences, with word order cast to the wayside.

Though this seems like a recipe for disaster concerning the patience of potential readers, the book is surprisingly easy to read. Guo paints her narrator as an endearing character from the get-go, and you can’t help but read along as she tries to sort out this new language with its adverbial phrases and futures tense. And as her English class progresses and she spends more time in England, the smoother her writing becomes, giving the readers a firsthand, believable look at her growth.

Of course, language is not the only barrier Z has to face. Adjusting to life in a democratic country is no easy task for a girl who was taught that her life should be devoted to her country, communist China. The sense of individuality and the desire for solitude that the Londoners around her convey is the most foreign of concepts to Z, and throughout the book, is one of the hardest for her to understand.

Yet through the course of the book, it isn’t the language that becomes the most pressing issue of Z’s life, or even the culture shock; it’s her search for love. Less than two months into her stay, Z has moved in with a man 20 years her senior. This man is the first in her life, and her lack of experience and stark contrasts in their cultures are glaringly apparent from the start. From eating habits to feelings about family and intimacy, Z tries to understand her partner’s lifestyle while trying to make him understand hers. And as the time runs down on her student visa, Z starts to come to terms with being neither an Easterner nor a Westerner, but a semblance of both.

Guo spins a poignant tale with Chinese English Dictionary, but it is one that could have become more endearing with more breadth. Once the man enters Z’s life, he becomes her life. There is not as much focus put on the rest of the cultural struggles Z must have gone through during her time in London. And with the liberation of democracy in this new country comes a series of sexual encounters that will make readers grimace and skim over if they’re looking for a Z with more substance. Which the book is full of, so they won’t have to look too far.

Though Guo hasn’t inspired me to try my hand at some bilingual writing, she certainly does a good job herself. If you’re looking for some emotional fiction with a quirky stylistic spin, A Concise Chinese- English Dictionary for Lovers is book is the language for you.

wagnere1@lasalle.edu