Purchase
The English Understand Wool
Helen DeWitt
Batery.Bet
Storybook ND Series
New Directions
August 2022
On Sale: August 16, 2022
64 pages
ISBN: 0811230074
EAN: 9780811230070
Kindle: B09YP7RCPZ
Hardcover / e-Book
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Novella / Short Story
Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English
father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to
avoid mauvais ton ("bad taste" loses something in
the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one
during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends
the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying
at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a
Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of
practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should
cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have
the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland
but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose
genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises).
All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent
of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual
Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will
she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good
taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the
sharks of New York?
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