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Oct 24, 2012skippie rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
A fascinating exploration of the linguistic and cultural peculiarities that can make it difficult for people of different backgrounds to understand, let alone love, each other. As a linguistic experiment alone, the book is already worth reading. The author does an excellent job of showing the protagonist's gradually improving command of the English language, and the subtle transformation from a foreign student's hilariously crippled narrative into a fully competent one is utterly believable. It's also an effective literary device: I found my own reader's view of "Z" as a charmingly naive visitor to an alien world shifting accordingly, to the point where I realized how much her limited grasp of the language had coloured my initial perception of her as a person. As her English communication skills improve and her understanding of the host culture grows, "Z" paradoxically becomes only more estranged from it. Again, the more I learned to appreciate Z's difficulties in adapting to an alien world view, the more my own perspective shifted away from an ingrained, uncritical familiarity with Western values and sensibilities to the vantage point of a visitor who finds these neither transparent nor self-evident. It's the kind of paradigm shift you usually only get after an extended absence from your own country; this book is therefore a must read for the serious armchair traveler. Intriguing, funny, sometimes cute and sometimes shocking, this book is strangely refreshing in spite of the unhappy undertone... I love it!