The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt Review

I want to talk about the book’s finale so, even though it’s not really a spoiler, I know the internet is full of people who don’t understand what that word means and thinks any detail of a story qualifies, so here’s the pointless but seemingly necessary fair warning at the top of the review:

SPOILERS

A wealthy young lady talks about her privileged upbringing. But not all is as it seems in the present - and why is she writing about her past to begin with?

Helen DeWitt’s The English Understand Wool is basically a short story printed in book form - and not a very good short story at that.

The passages about Marguerite’s childhood with her fancy parents were coma-inducing in their banality but the story picked up once we realise it’s a book the present-day Marguerite is writing. Which is intriguing because I was wondering why exactly anyone was paying this dreary person to write such boring drivel to begin with - there must be a twist coming. And there was.

But that too is fairly mundane - and would actually qualify as a spoiler - though I still won’t mention it regardless as it’s not what irked me. The finale is basically Marguerite “outsmarting” the various book industry people who are portrayed as sharks preying upon her story for the filthy lucre.

How it’s presented though is really stupid. Marguerite hand-writes an amendment in her contract which then gets signed off by all parties without it being picked up, and which gives her the upper hand. I actually have some experience with legal contracts and that’s not how contracts are done in the corporate world.

Any lawyer worth their salt will check each page once it’s returned from a client and check for any such amendments, whether or not it’s a high value contract - that’s the job. That this amendment made it past not one but two lawyers on both sides is too much to swallow. Especially when the explanation given as to why everyone signed off on it sight unseen is because “publishing is a business based on trust” - what?!

No - that’s ridiculous. No serious industry is based on blind trust. I think we’re meant to think Marguerite is some cool and clever cucumber for having outsmarted her would-be exploiters but she really just did something basic and happened to be lucky enough to have the two most incompetent lawyers in New York fail to pick up on it for contrived reasons.

It’d be like playing chess against someone who didn’t know how to play, ate the pieces and then ran off to chase a leaf - winning against someone like that doesn’t make you a chess grandmaster, it just means you beat someone who had no idea what they were doing.

YouTube influencers and the fact that it’s a short read in the age of book counting targets are probably why The English Understand Wool is kinda popular, not because it’s a good short story. I won’t say I was wholly uninterested in the narrative - once I realised the turn, I did want to see how it’d play out - but overall it is quite boring, forgettable and has an imbecilic finale.

(Also the author’s note ends with Helen DeWitt begging for cash via her websites, which I’ve never seen before in a book - very mauvais ton)