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A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

Xiaolu Guo

3.52 · Rating details · 5,519 ratings · 734 reviews

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself - Westerners cannot pronounce her name) arrives in London to spend a year learning English. Struggling to find her way in the city, and through the puzzles of tense, verb and adverb; she falls for an older Englishman and begins to realise that the landscape of love is an ev ...more

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Paperback, 354 pages

Published January 3rd 2008 by Vintage (first published 2007)

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Jul 03, 2016 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, british, literature, culture, china, fiction, romance, 21th-century, love

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Xiaolu Guo

Communication is proving tricky for Ziao, a young woman fresh off the plane from China. When she finds herself pitched headlong into an affair, and living with her English boyfriend, she decides to to write her very own dictionary, a Chinese-English dictionary for lovers. But will her new love survive the cultural chasms between East and West?

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سوم ماه جولای سال 2016میلادی

عنوان: فرهنگ فشرده لغات چینی به انگلیسی برا ...more

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May 30, 2008 Cecily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: china-japan-asia, language-related

This is the semi-fictionalised diary of a 24 year old Chinese woman coming to London to learn English. It was published in 2007, five years after the author came to the UK on an educational scholarship awarded by The British Council. She knew little about her destination, and felt understandably lost and alien when she arrived. That sense of being adrift and uncomprehending is beautifully conveyed.

Picture: Xiaolu as a new arrival in London in 2002, outside the Houses of Parliament (from The Gua ...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Jason Pettus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, personal-favorite, character-heavy

(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

So first, a confession from my personal life that is relevant to today's essay; that like many others, I too once fell in love with someone while on a foreign trip, in many ways precisely because it was a foreign country and she was a foreigner within that country. And like many others, it wasn't just simple lust that ma (My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

So first, a confession from my personal life that is relevant to today's essay; that like many others, I too once fell in love with someone while on a foreign trip, in many ways precisely because it was a foreign country and she was a foreigner within that country. And like many others, it wasn't just simple lust that made me fall in love with this person so intensely in such a short period, nor just a shared set of opinions and tastes; it was that I was feeling so scared and confused and alone in that foreign country, not able to even begin expressing myself adequately there about the emotions I was having, with this good-looking woman suddenly there and seemingly understanding everything I was going through without me ever having to say anything. In the middle of a very stressful international trip, she became a life preserver that I threw myself at, a small moment of calm in an unending storm that had been happening for nearly a month at the point I met her. And this of course is why the woman was ultimately not interested in a romance with me, because she understood where these emotions of mine were coming from, that for me it was all about the experience and little to do with her in particular; and she knew this of course because she had done some international traveling herself in the past, and had had the exact same experience that I was going through, but in her case did end up getting romantically involved with the person in question, which of course ended in disaster a few months later, such a surety that you didn't even really need me to mention it.

Like I said, it's a well-known story from the world of international travel, a situation that is tackled once again in the extremely delightful new novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, the first English-language book by Chinese-British author Xiaolu Guo, one that was short-listed for this year's Orange Prize and has gone on to become a surprise commercial hit. Based on Guo's own experiences when first moving to London at the turn of the millennium, the novel uses a personal-journal format to track the first year of a new immigrant, using only the words that immigrant knows at any given moment; it's a literary trick that could've been awfully gimmicky if flubbed, but here Guo uses it to profoundly comment on Western culture from the eyes of an Easterner, to use the difficulty of a new language to metaphorically examine the entire society that uses the language. It is a book simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly sad, a story that will strike a lot of powerful (and sometimes painful) chords among anyone who has done any amount of international traveling themselves; one of those books that makes you want to run out and buy a bunch of copies, so that you can slap them into friends' hands and yell, "See, this is why I go to all the trouble that I do so that I can travel. Read this and you'll finally get it." Oh, and did I mention that it's really freakin' dirty too? It's really freakin' dirty too, not in a shockingly pornographic way (as are many of the sexual projects that get reviewed here), but rather in a delightful and highly erotic way, with Guo again using the quirky details of the English language to get across some highly symbolic (and temperature-raising) mental images.

Like many travel stories, the actual plotline of Dictionary is a fairly simple one... ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Margitte rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-read, cross-cultural-experiences, fiction, british-novels, reviewed, chinese-novels

Blurb: When a young Chinese woman, newly arrived in London, moves in with her English boyfriend, she decides it’s time to write a Chinese-English dictionary for lovers. Xiaolu’s first novel in English is an utterly original journey of self-discovery.

Bland.

Here and there a highlight, particularly when the girl compares her own use of English with Shakespeare's and walks out the winner! (Rightly so!)

One thing, even Shakespeare write bad English. For example, he says “Where go thou?

...more

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Oct 25, 2007 Vicky rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-plus, novel, great-book-titles

Things I liked:

1)The title of this book, which is named after an actual Chinese to English dictionary.

2)Z's unintentional humor, like--"I not understanding what she saying. Mrs. Margaret have a neatly cut pale blonde hair, with very serious clothes. Top and her bottom always same colour. She not telling her age, but I guessing she from 31 to 56."

3)Z's language reflections, like--"I thought English is a strange language. Now I think French is even more strange. In France, their fish is poisson, t ...more

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Jul 07, 2014 Jill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, asian, love-story, 2014-favorites, chinese, british

Lately I’ve been obsessed with stories about impossible loves, those unrequited, betrayed, or starcrossed loves. I read books about two characters who’d die for each other but somehow cannot live for each other. I watch romantic movies with endings that are never happy, often sad, if I’m lucky hopeful. And I ask my friends about their loves and their friends’ loves and their friends’ friends’ loves: have any of them found someone and had it work out? has anybody found a love that is possible?

I w Lately I’ve been obsessed with stories about impossible loves, those unrequited, betrayed, or starcrossed loves. I read books about two characters who’d die for each other but somehow cannot live for each other. I watch romantic movies with endings that are never happy, often sad, if I’m lucky hopeful. And I ask my friends about their loves and their friends’ loves and their friends’ friends’ loves: have any of them found someone and had it work out? has anybody found a love that is possible?

I want to know for selfish reasons. In the same way you’d swallow a pill to cure illness, I consume love stories to soothe an anxious mind and an ailing heart. But it’s also aesthetic, a universal pursuit for stories that show us impossibility and how it is sad and therefore quite beautiful.

I feel like Xiaolu Guo is a kindred spirit, a partner anthropologist observing, seeking, and probing impossible loves. Because in A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers she creates a real humdinger of an impossible love: a 24-year-old Chinese woman with limited English plus a 40-something English man with limited empathy. Here’s the thing about impossible loves: we can’t stop believing they’re possible. Zhuang, the plucky and honest protagonist, recognizes it’s doomed from the start, and so do us readers. And yet, Zhuang continues to fill the pages of her journal with discussions of her love and we continue to turn the pages.

Cultural, political, and personal differences complicate their relationship, but most difficult is the linguistic difference. When Zhuang arrives in London, her English is very poor. Guo writes her brilliantly—there are verb tense issues, vocabulary misunderstandings, basic syntactical errors—but it reads very true and creates this wonderful image of a foreigner displaced, helpless, and looking for a mooring. Zhuang writes English in her journal daily and makes slow progress until she meets her lover. Suddenly, a blossoming: Zhuang’s intimate awakening is accompanied by a linguistic awakening. As she finds words in this once impossible language, she finds hidden pieces of herself.

‘Love’, this English word: like other English words it has tense. 'Loved' or 'will love' or 'have loved'. All these tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, love is '爱' (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future.

But how much importance do words really have? Can malicious ideas take root even without words to hold them down? What ties two people to each other—words? history? desire? Whatever the answer, Zhuang learns that it’s not love. ...more

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Jul 17, 2017 Alice Lippart rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, read-in-2017

Unconventional, fascinating, wonderful and slightly sad. Very, very good.

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Aug 11, 2010 Judy rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2010, adult

I'm not quite sure how feel about this book. What I liked, as many people mentioned, was the style. I thought the Chinglish felt natural and I often laughed at how Z misplaced words or made silly assumptions. I liked the progression from broken English to someone with a basic grasp of the language.

What I didn't like at all was Z herself. Her personality and her actions repulse me on many levels. I'm not sure why a country girl who immigrates to England would simply move in with a man she just m ...more

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Sep 08, 2011 MJ Nicholls rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, other-parts-of-the-universe, distaff

A bleak romance tale between a Chinese student and an arrogant vegetarian van driver, narrated in oddly distancing Engrish. Like Guo’s other künstlerroman Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, it paints a painful picture of immigrant life abroad, and kicks One Day so far up its sanctimonious arse, one can barely glimpse Anne Hathaway’s goofy grin from Ursa Minor. The style is slightly similar to Palahniuk’s Pygmy, though this came first, and the humour is less bourgeois satire, more Chairman Mao ...more

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Sep 19, 2007 Therese rated it did not like it · review of another edition

YAWN.Couldn't finish it. The female protagonist, Z, is so feeble and boring. She has some kind of love affair with some old hippy guy. Blah. Am totally bummed cuz it was really horrible and maybe I'm just not 'getting' what it is all about to be an Asian woman in modern society. This made me angry with Z's timid comformity and neediness. And I thought the boyfriend was really annoying and disgusting. Meh. Read if you must. But there have to be better things out there to spend your time on. ...more

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Apr 22, 2017 catriona rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own

First time I've read a whole book in one day in ages, this was addictive, heartbreaking and, so so interesting. Highly recommend. ...more

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Mar 10, 2008 Lee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, 2008, china

I completely identified with this book because it brilliantly captures the feeling of immersing oneself in a foreign language and culture. What happens when you begin to fluently speak, live and love in another language is fascinating. What the author conveys so well here is how the beliefs impregnated within the language alter how you interact with people and conduct relationships.

I loved Z and her practical wisdom. Her 5 week solo travel stint through Europe in many ways felt eerily similar t ...more

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Jan 11, 2018 Prpages rated it liked it · review of another edition

I'm not exactly sure how to rate this one. I still feel conflicted about it.
2.5-3 stars. ...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Yulia rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-to-me-by-frank, i-thought-i-hated-you, made-in-china

This is a charming and surprising book, but one that is also very frustrating to read (which is both a compliment and a complaint).

Note: It's best to read this book in the voice of someone struggring with Engrish. If you do so, it becoming easier adopting the tone and the mindset of the protagonist. (In my immigrant-raised habit of taking what is said and written with entire seriousness and my snobbery about proper grammar and pronunciation, I was initially offended by the author's choice to wr This is a charming and surprising book, but one that is also very frustrating to read (which is both a compliment and a complaint).

Note: It's best to read this book in the voice of someone struggring with Engrish. If you do so, it becoming easier adopting the tone and the mindset of the protagonist. (In my immigrant-raised habit of taking what is said and written with entire seriousness and my snobbery about proper grammar and pronunciation, I was initially offended by the author's choice to write in this broken voice, but then I saw that it couldn't have been otherwise and, really, would have been false if written correctly.)

Like the best travel writing, this book immerses the protagonist in the culture she's visiting, not as a tourist but an a true inhabitant. What results are amusing and sometimes quite mournful insights into culture an humanity. Her broken English belies her wisdom and awareness. But it is also about a girl who cannot go far enough from home to escape her insecurities.

In her not quite knowing how much she reveals in her confessions, the book presents an honest and stark portrayal of a girl-woman desperate for love, whether to escape her homeland or to escape her loneliness. I appreciated the stark honesty of her spoken words, as well as her jarring admission she wanted to isolate her lover from all his friends and to have him all for herself (which, to anyone aware of healthy relationships, can identify this as a paterrn of a dangerous possessiveness).

My main complaint is that her initial connection to "you," her English lover, is never convincingly established. They always seem to occupy different worlds, except perhaps when having sex. This is not a tale about meeting the right person at the wrong time or a tale of miscommunication due to language barriers or cultural differences. There is an inherent divide between the two lovers' needs and goals.

While I was constantly baffled by her asking him if they should be together forever (when he states repeatedly that he's a loner and can't make any promises about future), perhaps this was more skillfully done than I'd first perceived. Interestingly, it seems "you" understood this, but "I," the narrator, did not.

I was left very saddened by the story and I want to reread it one day, to determine which of my problems with the book were intentional choices on the writer's part and which should simply have been better explained (like her lover's not minding her moving in with her so suddenly, when he valued his personal space so much). But in the end, these are small complaints. I was very satisfied by this book and look forward to reading her other work. ...more

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Feb 28, 2008 brian tanabe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

What a beautiful little book. What a tragic love story. What a sexual coming-of-age tale. What a narrative on the Everyman being a broken man. What an account of the cultural differences between the east and the west. What an illustration of an asian woman in western society.

This is a powerful book about love in a modern relationship told through a captivating narrative.

In the beginning and in the end it is a love story -- a very sad love story but a completely realistic love story, a true lov ...more

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Aug 10, 2016 Annamaria rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-english, language

"Why do we have to study languages? Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and so painful?"

The problem with a boring main character is a boring point of view. Zhuang is the voice through which the story unfolds: she is a Chinese young woman who comes from a family of shoemakers and who's sent to England to learn English, of which she only speaks very few words (thing made clearer by the fact that the book itself starts with h "Why do we have to study languages? Why do we have to force ourselves to communicate with people? Why is the process of communication so troubled and so painful?"

The problem with a boring main character is a boring point of view. Zhuang is the voice through which the story unfolds: she is a Chinese young woman who comes from a family of shoemakers and who's sent to England to learn English, of which she only speaks very few words (thing made clearer by the fact that the book itself starts with her writing in a broken one). During her first days she suffers a great deal of loneliness. Soon she falls in love with an English man and within a week they move in together.

"I become language handicapped. I got so many problems to understand this world around me. I need you."

This man is a 40 something bisexual hippie sculptor who makes it clear from the start that he doesn't wish to settle down and have a family. He's very selfish and, once the novelty of this relationship wears off, he becomes easily stressed at how Zhuang needs him to mentor and guide her through the intricacies of his language and culture. Sure thing Zhuang doesn't make things easier on her part either: she's clingy and needy, doesn't try to meet new people and only wants to be with him, always with him, forever with him. Such is her obsession claustrophobic and unhealthy that he convinces her to leave on a self-discovery trip through Europe on her own to which I thought to myself "Oh finally, she's finally going to break out of her shell!". Not at all. She is just not interested in anything, doesn't want to discover new things, she just wants to be with him. She's so naive that is easily convinced by strangers to sleep in their houses and have rapey outdoor sex with them. How she's never concerned with murder everytime she follows them in places she doesn't know in a country of which she doesn't understand the language is beyond me.
In the end Zhuang doesn't grow at all, she starts off plain and ends in the same way.

What I was expecting from this book was an account on cultural differences between two countries so far away from each other, I was expecting a journey through language learning in the place in which it is spoken and the beauties of fluency once it is finally acquired. Zhuang just didn't care about any of this. Sure, every now and then she would make clever remarks about the differences between Chinese and English when it comes to grammatical structure and tenses and how senseless this new language seemed to be such as when she had her first taste of the Bard's poetry:

"What this “’tis,” “execut’st” and “sett’st”? Shakespeare can writing that, my spelling not too bad then."

But in the end what I got was an angsty young girl who just didn't want to go abroad and once she did she just wanted to be with one man for the rest of her staying. Disappointed is saying the least. ...more

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Dec 01, 2009 Josh rated it liked it · review of another edition

Actually three and a half stars. An extremely interesting book. The question is: who does one sympathize with in this love story? I can't figure it out, and my mind kept changing throughout the text. Is the young Chinese woman (abroad for the first time in London to study English and falling in love with an older British man) to be admired for the clarity and simplicity with which she sees the world? Respected for her earnest and hard-fought struggle with a foreign culture? And empowered by her ...more

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Jan 26, 2014 Navaneeta rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, ebooks, tezpur, migration, 2014

When I started reading it, I disliked and disdained it. I have had my share of Amy Tan; I use English as second language; I know what it is to get to know a language for the first time. And "Z" here was an insult to all of us.

But then halfway through the book I finally realised what the writer was doing (yes! I am that dense; but then it was difficult to get past the whining, needy voice of Zhuang). In her less than competent English (and perception), Zhuang manages to question and subvert all t ...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Chrissie rated it really liked it

Shelves: text-checked, china, great-britain, philo-psychol, fiction, relationships, kirkus

I loved this short little book. At the start there stands the words: "Nothing in this book is true, except for the love between her and him." The depiction of her, Ms Z's, love for him is so true that the book truly shines. This is reason enough to read the book. In addition how it feels to struggle in a new country with a new language is fabulously described. That a land's culture is entwined with its language is another important aspect of the book.Finally there were interesting tidbits about ...more

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Jan 10, 2017 Philip rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, 4-stars, fiction, china, unconventional-style

Well-written coming-of-age story of a dysfunctional cross-cultural romance told with a thoroughly unique voice. Guo nails both Z's evolving language skills as well as her "stranger in a strange land" take on the realities and absurdities of living in a totally alien culture. I didn't develop any particular sympathy for Z's unnamed British lover - and not a huge amount for Z herself, for that matter - but the writing style alone held my interest more than any similar "female novel" has done in a ...more

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Sep 07, 2019 Vio rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, english, multikulti, ebook, uk, china

Did I mention it is my third Xiaolu Guo? All of them in 2019? If not, mark my words and remember this name. ;)

I don't have anything in particular to say about this book, except that the prose* flows, I read it quite quickly, like it happened with my first Xiaolu Guo as well. The thing is - I was planning on reading A ... Dictionary while on the train/bus, but apparently I coudn't let my hands of this book and here I am, wondering what I am going to read next on a train/bus etc. Big drama.

Yeah, X ...more

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Nov 13, 2019 sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: asian, rain, melon-collie

God this was so beautiful and melancholic. Loved this so much that I finished it in a day. I really felt that I was transported to London and the quiet house and it's garden. I'll definitely cherish this book 💖 ...more

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Nov 14, 2017 Kate added it · review of another edition

Shelves: dnf

DNF at 35 pages

I'm sorry this is 100% a me thing but I cannot STAND when books are written in an accent, whether that be a southern twang, a british accent, or from a person who doesn't know English well, I simply get driven insane and can't enjoy the story. I flipped ahead a bunch and it looks like the character learns English over time in the book but I'm sorry I just will not enjoy this book because that's going to be the only thing I notice about it. I don't want to offend anyone on this bec ...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Vanessa Wu rated it really liked it · review of another edition

My boyfriend (who is English and reads the Guardian) gave me this book. My flatmate (who is Chinese and reads Grazia) borrowed it without asking. That's the trouble with talking to your flatmate about books. This week she's gone off to Austria with my copy of Candy (by Mian Mian) because I made the mistake of telling her how much I was enjoying it.

Back to this one by Xiaolu Guo. I avoided it for a while because it's written in bad English. My boyfriend found this cute but it's not good for me. I ...more

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Mar 28, 2017 Biblio Curious rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lit-eastern, non-fiction, linguistics

Whoever designed this cover should have his license revoked. Seriously.

My copy travelled the world with me because I didn't want to lose it in storage. I only brought 5 non-work related books with me and this is one of them.

The title is perfect, I saw that first at the bookstore, quickly followed by shame at the cover!! I almost didn't buy it. But the contents... unlike anything I'd ever seen in a novel!

It's a diary of a Chinese Expat learning English in London. Her entries are in dictionary f ...more

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Jan 31, 2020 Sofia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I absolutely adored this book.
I feel my review will not be good enough to express my feelings.
I love how simple, deep and funny it was.
It was how life is. This book is about love, it's about, growing up, it's about being a woman, it's about being a traveler and an immigrant at the same time, it's about mutual understanding in so many ways, it's about language. This book it's all about life in almost 400 pages. I highly recommend it to everyone. Wonderful. Wonderful. ...more

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Feb 02, 2016 Banafsheh rated it liked it · review of another edition

Easy to read, but generally a bit disappointing . I was waiting for the moment to feel the love, but couldn't feel it between Z and the man. Couldn't feel sympathy to Z or the man either. Little garden and the details of trees and plants and also sculptures were my favorites. Worth reading from the cultural point of view. Loved the languages comparison. ...more

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Nov 29, 2020 R K rated it liked it · review of another edition

At time the emotions of the characters were too bourgeois for me to understand, but over all I enjoyed reading this

Full review to come later

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Jan 16, 2012 Antonomasia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: modern-british-fiction, orange-prize, decade-2000s, granta-ybn-2013, 2013, china, london

Oct 2015.
It still bothers me that I haven't written about why I liked this book so much two and a half years ago. Among the reasons:
- The first 50 or so pages (?) were very funny and fascinating re. showing language and travel through the eyes, and words, of someone who didn't speak much English. It's kind of a shame the book didn't continue in this tightrope-walking satire, satire which was only okay, and also infinitely more interesting (when it did and did not conform to stereotypes), because Oct 2015.
It still bothers me that I haven't written about why I liked this book so much two and a half years ago. Among the reasons:
- The first 50 or so pages (?) were very funny and fascinating re. showing language and travel through the eyes, and words, of someone who didn't speak much English. It's kind of a shame the book didn't continue in this tightrope-walking satire, satire which was only okay, and also infinitely more interesting (when it did and did not conform to stereotypes), because it was written by a Chinese woman.
- It switched to be more emotional and humorous for the remainder of the novel. It was a less intense (and therefore easier) example of the same thing I found with Bergman's Winter Light among other works. Where I, different parts of me, from different times and relationships, though sometimes also contradictory feelings I had simultaneously, (and which no doubt made me difficult because I could never be happy for long and hadn't learned to explain everything behind it)... I identified with both of the lovers at once. Her longing and occasional sense of fulfilment, and his wish for a socially wider and more relaxed and spacious world: I especially liked the bit from his diaries about friendships and lovers. And the book is perhaps the only book I've found which has what I've realised is my own idiosyncratic idea of the happy ending (one which most of the culture doesn't agree with). (view spoiler)

I'd strongly recommend the first 50-100 pages of the novel to anyone who likes linguistically playful writing; however, the remainder is a notably different beast, and with many readers seeming impatient with it, or unsympathetic to the characters, perhaps only those who see themselves or people they know in the characters will like the rest a lot. ...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Bhargavi Balachandran rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: jan-2011, british-council, fiction, borrowed-books, read-in-2011

Sometimes when you read a book that makes you laugh and cry all at once and you wonder what kind of a book that is- a good one, I have realized .Xiaolu's book is a poignant ,yet funny tale of a young Chinese girl who arrives in London with shiny eyes and unending reserves of curiosity to learn English.Written in the first person narrative,almost like a diary,the first 100 odd pages almost reads like a chicklit - breezy and funny. As the protagonist, Z tackles English breakfasts,the infamous" Eng Sometimes when you read a book that makes you laugh and cry all at once and you wonder what kind of a book that is- a good one, I have realized .Xiaolu's book is a poignant ,yet funny tale of a young Chinese girl who arrives in London with shiny eyes and unending reserves of curiosity to learn English.Written in the first person narrative,almost like a diary,the first 100 odd pages almost reads like a chicklit - breezy and funny. As the protagonist, Z tackles English breakfasts,the infamous" English weather" ,dodgy lodgings,intricacies of English grammar and hosts of other "English" things, Xiaolu will enthrall you with her wit and funny observations, all written in deliberately bad English.

I fell in love with the protagonist,Z,whose earnestness made the book all the more special for me.Gradually,as Z settles into her life in London and falls in love with a man, the tone changes. What starts off like a borderline chicklit starts getting deeper and more philosophical and you can certainly sense the metamorphosis Z goes through from the wide-eyed carefree foreigner to a self-introspecting ,slightly jaded individual.Understandably, as you progress through the book,you can see the change in Z's language and her grammar.As Z discovers Sex ,love and independence,she struggles to find a balance between her Chinese sensibilities and the expectations of a western civilization.

The book took me on a nostalgic trip ,where several years ago I found myself in a strange country,struggling to grapple with my new life and battling strong feelings of "taking the next flight back home". Xiaolu captures this sentiment rather well and Z's loneliness comes across clearly. I absolutely loved the way every chapter started with the meaning of a word that Z encounters- these entries are from the dictionary she carries with her at all times.

Overall,a beautiful book that I would recommend to everyone. Towards the end,it might get a little bleak with more philosophical overtones,but on the whole you'll love the journey the book takes you on. 4/5 for Xiaolu's book. ...more

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About Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu Guo

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Xiaolu Guo (Simplified Chinese: 郭小櫓 pinyin:guō xiǎo lǔ, born 1973) is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She utilizes various media, including film and writing, to tell stories of alienation, introspection and tragedy, and to explore China's past, present and future in an increasingly connected world.

Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize f ...more

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“It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.” — 177 likes

“About time, what I really learned from studying English is: time is different with timing.
I understand the difference of these two words so well. I understand falling in love with the right person in the wrong timing could be the greatest sadness in a person's entire life.” — 81 likes

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