The English Understand Wool [Hardcover]

A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friends Brilliant and inimitable Helen DeWitt: patron saint of anyone in the world who has to deal with the crap of those in power who do a terrible job with their power, and who make those who are under their power utterly miserable. DeWitt has plenty of stories to tell about mercenary literary agents, feckless editors and the systematically thwarted ambitions of artists. Her brilliant new novella, This crisp novella, the latest from Helen DeWitt, is told in a series of hostile letters between the girl and her crass American editor in New York.? In Helen DeWitts new novelette, Prose as sharp as Maman's tailored clothes. DeWitts mastery of adverbs is deserving of worship. Weighing in at just 64 pages, Helen DeWitts I didnt want the book to end. That a ghost writer should commute her story  that of a missing child raised outside the culture she was born into by imposters  to the kind of neutered copy the masses expect is quite out of the question. I am who I tell you I am, DeWitt seems to be saying, and I will speak for myself in the language of my choosing. DeWitt is the sort of writer to whom engineering  the right mark in the right place, getting the message through  matters as much as exposition. A midsummers night dream, a turbulent and amoral comedy, disrupting the sleep with its dodges and masksaltogether a delight. Readers of Helen DeWitts limited previous outputtwo novels and a collection of stories in twenty-two yearswill fall greedily on anything new. Her novella A staggeringly intelligent examination into the nature of truth, love, respect, beauty and trust& This is that rare thing, or? A bright jewel of a book, to light up an afternoon. Helen DeWitts