A love letter of sorts: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Xiaolu Guo)

I never really know what attracts me to certain books while creating revulsion against others. But then I guess that's true for all of us. We choose our own hells, being caressed by the seducing smell of new/ old paper, the goosebumps of creating the first crease in the till then perfect binding.

 Since my childhood I have always been allergic towards anything which would stink of being a love story. So, my initial foray into the world of romances and what we today know as romantic story began grudgingly much later than it is true for most teenagers and that also at the behest of my best friend who till date remains the romantic yin to my pessimistic yang. The reason I am sermonizing about this is to tell you how I almost didn't pick up this book.

I had heard about Xiaolu from a friend, and that too in absolutely unflattering and non-literary terms (My friend was pointing out to say that she looked a lot like the ghost from the movie The Grudge with her long hair and drawn face). So, I can't actually say that someone told me to pick up this book. As they say it was destiny. Only instead of Cupid or Fortuna or Fate it was Flipkart (works so much better than most matrimonial/dating sites, matchmaking books to lovers one random search at a time) that suggested that I pick up this book based on my other searches. Now it is interesting to note that my other searches included The Book of Destruction, Death comes at Pemberley and so on. As they say, Bibliomaniacs work in mysterious ways. I almost didn't pick it up but the red and the naked girl and the figs and the fig leaves had to catch my attention what with all my mania about myths of origin and all that (This points out how important it is to have an attractive cover!)

As the name suggests, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is a love story narrated through the more mundane world of dictionaries and language learning books. It is the story of a 23 yr old Zhuang (she shortens it to Z as no one in the western world is too happy to pronounce anything which has too many consonants) who is sent to England to study English at a language school by her parents who are shoe-makers. Before we create a romanticised version of the poor oriental girl coming in from a poor background into the big bad world of England holding on to her ideas of chastity and love or so on, Xiaolo completely undermines our expectations when Z so easily gets into a live-in relationship with a man who is 20 yrs her senior. I love the way she takes the initiative to move in, just because she misunderstands his English euphemism of "Be my guest" as a literal one. English in the story becomes both the word as well as the silence of her world as she struggles to learn and understand its various manifests, especially its inherent loneliness and creation of a sense of self that overrides all others. It is not merely a story of cultural tensions as Z struggles to comprehend the aloof nature of her lover, his refusal to share the idea of "intimate" with her, it is also a story of how language itself creates individuals and confers upon them so much of their identity. In a recent interview during the Jaipur Lit Fest, Xiaolu stated that writing in English frees her even if she still writes in halting sentences and syntax. It is this very essence of freedom that Z embodies as well. Her progress in learning English unfolds side by side to her sexual as well as individual liberation. The Z who is so confounded by the act of love making (the part were she reads the instructions on how to put a condom with absolute religiosity is hilarious) and her wonder and disgust at the dildo ( she calls it a plastic cucumber) that she is presented on her birthday by one of her friends in England is the same Z who tells a perfect stranger that she meets during her travels "I think I want to have sex with you" and masturbates without any qualms.

I call this book a love story not because there is a man and a woman who co-exist together and try and build a world with each other. Trust me, there is nothing remotely romantic (in the conventional Mills and Boons, Eric Segal sense of romantic). They are mismatched, Z is too emotionally dependent on her lover who is obtuse in his involvement and most importantly the story was never really about them. I call it a love story for the fact that it is a love song to sense of self that is finally liberated from not only parental, lover or societal constraints ( it is interesting that Z comes from Communist China where the concept of 'I' is seen as obscene) but also constraints that we place on ourselves in the name of right, goodness and identity. The fact that each chapter begins with a dictionary definition of the idea that completely gets subverted through the consequent events narrated in it makes the reading even more surreal as we are forced to realize the trickery that language is. The book has all the ingredients of the typical south east literature, post-colonial bruhaha-- the displacement, the nostalgia, the venerating of English as the only power of social mobility and all that which lies between it. But surprisingly it doesn't fall into these stereotypical structures and instead becomes not only a tale of growing up but also a tale of being young and stupid and everything in between. In the imperfection of it's writer's language as she struggles to maintain this notebook of the words that she has learnt while consequently telling you about the adventures that led her to those words, you see the little bit of yourself who struggled in love (Z's lover is a bisexual so you can understand how crazy that must be!) , made stupid mistakes and thought life couldn't be so hum drum.

I would recommend A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers not because it does so many things in terms of language, ideas and stances, but for the simple reason that it is a delightful read and will promise to keep you awake and go "oh my god! that is so me!" till the wee hours into the morning.

till the next time
keep it bookish

the bookbug