A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers.(Brief article)(Book review)

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers XIAOLU Guo. Doubleday/Talese, $23.95 (304p) ISBN 078-0485-52029-4

A Young woman from rural China learns how to comprehend "love" and "heartbreak" in English in this quirky, touching novel. Zhuang, or "Z" to tongue-tied foreigners, arrives in London at age 23 after being dispatched by her parents to get an education. Her immersion and painful education are laid bare to readers, who witness Z's vocabulary, grammar and understanding blossom throughout her diarylike account, sped along by an intense romance with a man met at the cinema. Her consuming love begins promisingly, but her failure to interpret her lover's lifestyle …