The English Understand Wool
Ratings18
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings18
Average rating4.2
A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friends Maman was exigeante—there is no English word–and I had the benefit of her training. Others may not be so fortunate. If some other young girl, with two million dollars at stake, finds this of use I shall count myself justified. 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?
Reviews with the most likes.
A young woman attempts to explain her mother and her relationship to her mother in this short and beautifully crafted novella.
Marguerite is quite the moneyed 17-year old, traipsing the globe with her mother to secure items from those that understand it best. While the English understand wool — “the French understand wine, cheese, bread”; “the Germans understand precision, machines”; and “the Arabs understand honor.”
This short story beautifully packaged, joins a slate of recently read books that offer up incisive pokes at the publishing industry coming off the heels of Yellowface and Erasure. I'd say more, but it would otherwise be mauvais ton
With apologies for a metaphor moralizing food, (pleasure should not be guilty): The cover is a great fit, this feels like a slice of sinfully rich cake, no redeeming nutritional value. High society crimes, villains which thanks as much to snobbery as fraud and theft, you love to hate, but make for a delightful escapism in hearing descriptions of the luxuries they indulge in while ‘getting away with it'. 🧐The inversion of the traditional exploited teen trope was refreshing. 👌🏻In different hands, I could see a longer treatise on what a ‘cold' upbringing does to the narrator after the time frame covered, but that was definitely beyond this moment of sly fun.
