Helen DeWitt’s The English Understand Wool is a slim novella at 69 pages that packs a satisfying punch. After my sister, Sara (who I mistakenly thought was the person on the right in the photo below at Liz’s Book Bar in NYC) encouraged, cajoled, and demanded that I read TEUW, I bought the audiobook on sale for around $4.00 and sat on my back patio and listened to Marguerite writing her memoir. After about five minutes, I wondered: what the heck is this about? Who is this girl who speaks French and is hounded by her fancy NYC literary agent, Bethany, who offers notes, “I know you’ve been traumatized; when you’ve been through something like that* sometimes it’s easier to bottle it up inside, especially if you’re working alone.” *That trauma, dear reader, is something you will discover further along, and it’s as surprising a plot as I’ve read in recent years.
Liz’s Book Bar. The person on the right is NOT my sister, Sara…or so she claims…
About ten pages in, I understood that DeWitt was no ordinary author. I moved from my seat to cleaning the screens on my porch and kept stopping to rewind what I’d thought I’d heard. There’re several non-English phrases that challenged my college French and googled before moving on. Thus, exigeante means demanding; C’est curieux means It’s curious; and at the heart of this gem is Mauvais goût meaning bad taste.
Marguerite was raised with good taste, and tacky, rude, or otherwise gaudy behavior, clothing, or manners is unacceptable. And soon this reader found herself immersed in that world Mauvais goût was unacceptable as well!
Marguerite agrees to meet her tacky NYC agent, Bethany at a classy restaurant and is appalled by her clothes, shoes, and philistine beliefs. Typically, I’d side with the character who is the recipient of such ridicule, but DeWitt’s wit is beyond perfection:
“She [Bethany] came rushing in [late] at 1:15. She wore white patent-leather shoes; these distracted me from the muddle of garments thrown together seemingly at random. (It seemed unkind to condemn these; New York offers hideous garments in an abundance rivaled only by Scotland. The shoes were inexplicable.) She sat down; I was unable, with some difficulty, to take my mind off the mystery of the shoes.”
Later when Marguerite, who is 17, orders wine with no ID necessary, Bethany is hung up on this fact. Marguerite, who serves as narrator for DeWitt’s already-classic novella, remarks, “This [Marguerite ordering and drinking wine] was precisely the sort of idiocy one would expect from someone who wore white patent-leather shoes.” Classic Marguerite!
The English Understand Wool is one book in a group published by Storybook New Directions in New York City. With seven other titles (all under one hundred pages) in this collection, I’ve already got them on TBR list in Goodreads.
Saint Johns River State has the novella in its collection. I listened to the novella, and now I’m reading it in preparation for hosting my in-person book club on June 27.
À bientôt, mes ami! (See you later, my friends!)
Natalie Portman reading DeWitt's gem.