Laurie Gwen Shapiro The Anglophile

The Anglophile

Laurie Gwen Shapiro

Red Dress, Aug 2005, $12.95, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0373895291

Thirty-five years old Shari Diamond has been fascinated with Anglo-Saxon history since she met Christopher Robin as a kid when he starred in her copies of the Winnie classics. Studying for her PhD in dead languages at NYU, Shari searches for the last known person alive who speaks Volupuk as she has for several years.

In Chicago to give a talk on Volupuk, she meets British bloke Christopher "Kit" Brown, who makes her forget her boyfriend back home Kevin Bernstein. However, to her shock, Kit is studying Volupuk and insists the last user lives near York. Ignoring Kevin's concerns, Shari rushes to England where she meets a boy from her past, but neither Owen nor Kevin hold a candle to Kit until she learns in a garden his secret connection to the last speaker of Volupuk in the world.

Besides highlighting the rapid loss of languages as the world grows smaller through modern day communications, THE ANGLOPHILE is a fine chick lit tale starring a dynamic heroine, her Jewish New York stereotyped mother and the men in her life. The storyline focuses on the rivalry between Kit and Shari in search of the last known user of a shortly to be extinct language. When that is gone, like many languages which are oral only, cultures die. The romance is an 18 carat diamond that includes the efforts of Kevin and Owen to compete with Kit for Shari's heart, but it is the language that steals the show though that plays a minor role in this fine thought provoking tale.

Harriet Klausner