The English Understand Wool by Helen Dewitt

Here is another recommendation from the Parnassus Friday vlog "If You Haven't Read It It Is New To You", where they veer off the usual bookseller path of selling you the latest and greatest and dig back into time past to highlight gems that were not much lauded or have been too soon forgotten. It is a novella, maybe even better described as a short story, about a young woman whom the world calls Marguerite. She thinks of herself by a different name, the name she was raised with, which she never tells us. In the novel’s opening pages, she describes a recent trip she took with her “Maman” to buy fabric for a suit, or, rather, a tailleur. The pair travelled from Marrakesh to the Outer Hebrides, then on to London, where they remained for six weeks (staying at Claridge’s) while the tailor made the garments. Since no one can be expected to go that long without practising an instrument, they had the television removed from their suite and an electronic piano install Marguerite’s story is immediately destabilizing; her existence sounds like the fantastic confection of someone with no real experience of everyday life. And it is, sort of, but not in ways the reader may initially think. This is a treatise on many things and a funny comment on them all. Don't miss it, it only takes a moment to read and it will leave you happy that you did.