
The English Understand Wool
Storybook ND Series
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $6.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lucy Raynor
-
By:
-
Helen DeWitt
About this listen
A modern amorality play about a 17-year-old girl, the wilder shores of connoisseurship, and the power of false friendsMaman 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?
©2022 Helen DeWitt (P)2024 New Directions Publishing Corp.Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Ramey
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Sarah Ramey
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.
-
-
💯 a valuable use of your money AND time. 💯
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-20
By: Sarah Ramey
-
Fair Play
- By: Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal
- Narrated by: Emma D'Arcy
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fair Play is a poignant portrayal of the intricacies of love and work through the lens of two women, both accomplished artists, whose intimate relationship defied societal norms. Set against the backdrop of Helsinki and summers on their remote island paradise, Jansson weaves together the nuanced details of the women's creative lives, offering a rich tapestry of their daily routines, artistic process, and innermost thoughts. Through the lens of their unique relationship, we witness a true example of progressive love, where generosity and respect are key to a beautiful and thriving partnership.
-
-
emma d'arcy needs to narrate as many books as possible
- By Kindle Customer on 08-23-24
By: Tove Jansson, and others
-
Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
-
-
Dry witted… amusing
- By DeniseB on 01-28-23
By: Alan Bennett
-
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
- By: Barbara Comyns
- Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.
-
-
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity
- By Chicago_Mama on 07-26-24
By: Barbara Comyns
-
The Strange Case of Jane O.
- A Novel
- By: Karen Thompson Walker
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Alex Sarrigeorgiou
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
-
-
The performances were soul-reaching
- By Laurie E. Barshay on 03-29-25
-
Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
-
-
Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness
- A Memoir
- By: Sarah Ramey
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens, Sarah Ramey
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her harrowing, defiant, and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.
-
-
💯 a valuable use of your money AND time. 💯
- By Amazon Customer on 06-14-20
By: Sarah Ramey
-
Fair Play
- By: Tove Jansson, Thomas Teal
- Narrated by: Emma D'Arcy
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fair Play is a poignant portrayal of the intricacies of love and work through the lens of two women, both accomplished artists, whose intimate relationship defied societal norms. Set against the backdrop of Helsinki and summers on their remote island paradise, Jansson weaves together the nuanced details of the women's creative lives, offering a rich tapestry of their daily routines, artistic process, and innermost thoughts. Through the lens of their unique relationship, we witness a true example of progressive love, where generosity and respect are key to a beautiful and thriving partnership.
-
-
emma d'arcy needs to narrate as many books as possible
- By Kindle Customer on 08-23-24
By: Tove Jansson, and others
-
Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
-
-
Dry witted… amusing
- By DeniseB on 01-28-23
By: Alan Bennett
-
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
- By: Barbara Comyns
- Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.
-
-
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity
- By Chicago_Mama on 07-26-24
By: Barbara Comyns
-
The Strange Case of Jane O.
- A Novel
- By: Karen Thompson Walker
- Narrated by: Jay Myers, Alex Sarrigeorgiou
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. Three days after her first visit to a psychiatrist, Jane suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.
-
-
The performances were soul-reaching
- By Laurie E. Barshay on 03-29-25
-
Wild Houses
- By: Colin Barrett
- Narrated by: Damian Gildea
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riotous, raucous, and deeply resonant debut novel from “one of the best story writers in the English language today” (Financial Times), Wild Houses follows two outsiders caught in the crosshairs of a small-town revenge kidnapping gone awry.
-
-
Insider look at a small crime
- By Probably did on 03-24-24
By: Colin Barrett
-
Goodbye, Columbus
- And Five Short Stories
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef, Jonathan Davis, Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin. Neil comes from poor Newark, while Brenda is of suburban Short Hills. On one summer break, they meet and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender.
-
-
A masterpiece
- By marjorie on 10-12-24
By: Philip Roth
-
Us Fools
- By: Nora Lange
- Narrated by: Emily Lawrence
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
-
-
The story
- By Ashwoman on 01-14-25
By: Nora Lange
-
Kappa
- By: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Narrated by: Wallace Shawn
- Length: 2 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Kappa is a creature from Japanese folklore known for dragging unwary toddlers to their deaths in rivers: a scaly, child-sized creature, looking something like a frog, but with a sharp, pointed beak and an oval-shaped saucer on top of its head, which hardens with age. Akutagawa’s Kappa is narrated by Patient No. 23, a madman in a lunatic asylum: he recounts how, while out hiking in Kamikochi, he spots a Kappa.
-
-
A commentary on societies
- By Jrod238 on 11-18-24
-
Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
-
-
Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
-
The Answer Is No
- A Short Story
- By: Fredrik Backman, Elizabeth DeNoma - translator
- Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.
-
-
Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
-
Forgotten on Sunday
- By: Valérie Perrin, Hildegarde Serle
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Lagelée
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Justine is 21 years old, and has lived with her grandparents and her cousin Jules since the death of her parents. As a nursing assistant at a retirement home, she spends much of her days listening to her residents’ stories. After bonding with Hélène, an almost 100-year-old resident, the two women slowly reveal their stories to one another. Whilst Justine helps Hélène to relive her memories of love and war, Hélène encourages Justine to confront the secrets of her own past and the loss she keeps buried deep within.
-
-
The love story of a Lucien and Alain being intertwined with the two orphans.
- By "Old" but Good Reader on 07-26-24
By: Valérie Perrin, and others
-
I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
- By: Baek Sehee
- Narrated by: Jully Lee
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her—what to call it?—depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends, performing the calmness her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favourite street food: the spicy rice cake, tteokbokki?
-
-
Woe is me
- By Adrianna Flores on 07-10-23
By: Baek Sehee
-
So Late in the Day
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Claire Keegan
- Length: 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude - and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.
-
-
This Audible is not the full Kindle/Book version.
- By Mary F. on 11-26-23
By: Claire Keegan
-
Someone Like Us
- A Novel
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Junior Nyong'o
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth.
-
-
Not ideal as an audiobook
- By Kate Liburdi on 04-09-25
By: Dinaw Mengestu
-
Four Letters of Love
- A Novel
- By: Niall Williams
- Narrated by: Niall Williams
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nicholas Coughlan is twelve years old when his father, an Irish civil servant, announces that God has commanded him to become a painter. He abandons the family and a wife who is driven to despair. Years later, Nicholas’s own civil-service career is disrupted by tragic news: his father has burned down the house, with all his paintings and himself in it. Isabel Gore is the daughter of a poet. She’s a passionate girl, but her brother is the real prodigy, a musician. And yet this family, too, is struck by tragedy: a seizure leaves the boy mute and unable to play.
-
-
Remarkable
- By Cat Lover on 09-29-24
By: Niall Williams
-
The Hypocrite
- A Novel
- By: Jo Hamya
- Narrated by: Claire Kinson
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father’s verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven’t aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia’s play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them.
-
-
Consistently boring
- By lifelong learner on 10-09-24
By: Jo Hamya
-
Memorial Days
- A Memoir
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: Geraldine Brooks
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz–just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy–collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
-
-
Uninspired, mediocre writing.
- By C. Tyler on 03-04-25
By: Geraldine Brooks
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
- By: Barbara Comyns
- Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.
-
-
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity
- By Chicago_Mama on 07-26-24
By: Barbara Comyns
-
Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
-
-
Dry witted… amusing
- By DeniseB on 01-28-23
By: Alan Bennett
-
Lightning Rods
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Dushko Petrovich
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"All I want is to be a success.That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then he fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat hundreds of pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel so sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet his for frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brain storm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top - and to the very heart of corporate insanity.
-
-
Wild tale, enveloping reader
- By Josh on 11-11-11
By: Helen DeWitt
-
Some Trick
- Thirteen Stories
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell, Emily Sutton-Smith, James Langton, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.
-
-
Down the Rabbit Hole
- By Billye Kay on 02-15-20
By: Helen DeWitt
-
Self-Portraits
- Stories
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing.
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Sorrow and Bliss
- A Novel
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.
-
-
Very Disappointed -- 2.75 Stars
- By Sharlotte on 06-07-21
By: Meg Mason
-
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths
- By: Barbara Comyns
- Narrated by: Madeleine Leslay
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.
-
-
Don’t be fooled by the simplicity
- By Chicago_Mama on 07-26-24
By: Barbara Comyns
-
Alan Bennett: Stories
- Read by Alan Bennett
- By: Alan Bennett
- Narrated by: Alan Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A unique collection of eight Alan Bennett stories, read by the author. Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved authors and an acclaimed storyteller. This exclusive compilation includes eight of his best tales, collected together for the first time. Here is his celebrated, iconic memoir 'The Lady in the Van'; as well as two fascinating autobiographical accounts of his family and childhood.
-
-
Dry witted… amusing
- By DeniseB on 01-28-23
By: Alan Bennett
-
Lightning Rods
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Dushko Petrovich
- Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"All I want is to be a success.That's all I ask." Joe fails to sell a single set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in six months. Then he fails to sell a single Electrolux and must eat hundreds of pieces of homemade pie, served up by his would-be customers who feel so sorry for him. Holed up in his trailer, Joe finds an outlet his for frustrations in a series of ingenious sexual fantasies, and at last strikes gold. His brain storm, Lightning Rods, Inc., will take Joe to the very top - and to the very heart of corporate insanity.
-
-
Wild tale, enveloping reader
- By Josh on 11-11-11
By: Helen DeWitt
-
Some Trick
- Thirteen Stories
- By: Helen DeWitt
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell, Emily Sutton-Smith, James Langton, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For sheer unpredictable brilliance, Gogol may come to mind, but no author alive today takes a listener as far as Helen DeWitt into the funniest, most yonder dimensions of possibility. Her jumping-off points might be statistics, romance, the art world’s piranha tank, games of chance and games of skill, the travails of publishing, or success.
-
-
Down the Rabbit Hole
- By Billye Kay on 02-15-20
By: Helen DeWitt
-
Self-Portraits
- Stories
- By: Osamu Dazai
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In these short stories, collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy, we can see just how closely Dazai’s life mirrored his art, and vice versa, as the writer/narrator falls from grace, rises to fame, and falls again. Addiction, debt, shame, and despair dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death, and yet despite all the lies and deception he resorted to in life, there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing.
By: Osamu Dazai
-
Sorrow and Bliss
- A Novel
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Friel just turned forty. Once, she worked at Vogue and planned to write a novel. Now, she creates internet content. She used to live in a pied-à-terre in Paris. Now she lives in a gated community in Oxford, the only person she knows without a PhD, a baby or both, in a house she hates but cannot bear to leave. But she must leave, now that her husband Patrick—the kind who cooks, throws her birthday parties, who loves her and has only ever wanted her to be happy—has just moved out.
-
-
Very Disappointed -- 2.75 Stars
- By Sharlotte on 06-07-21
By: Meg Mason
-
Weather
- A Novel
- By: Jenny Offill
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years, she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives.
-
-
Read This Article Before Listening to Weather
- By MOR Denver on 04-28-20
By: Jenny Offill
-
Praiseworthy
- By: Alexis Wright
- Narrated by: Jacqui Katona
- Length: 36 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a small town in the north of Australia, a mysterious cloud heralds both an ecological catastrophe and a gathering of the ancestors. A crazed visionary looks to donkeys to solve the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife, seeking solace from his madness, follows the dance of butterflies and scours the internet to find out how her Aboriginal/Chinese family could be repatriated to China. One of their sons, named Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide.
-
-
Beautiful, powerful book full of poetry
- By Guy on 11-11-24
By: Alexis Wright
-
Ducks, Newburyport
- By: Lucy Ellmann
- Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda. But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate? When are you allowed to start swearing?
-
-
Stephanie Ellyne really brings the book to life
- By Shashank on 02-27-20
By: Lucy Ellmann
-
Brother, I'm Dying
- By: Edwidge Danticat
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Award-winning, best-selling author Edwidge Danticat taps her exceptional storytelling gifts for this memoir of the two men who raised her. When the author was only four years old, her parents emigrated from Haiti to New York in search of a better life, leaving their daughter in the care of her uncle Joseph. A peaceful pastor in Port-au-Prince, Joseph raised Edwidge with the love and devotion of a father, despite facing many hardships in politically turbulent Haiti.
-
-
A Superb Reflection
- By Chandra on 12-29-07
By: Edwidge Danticat
-
A Brief History of Seven Killings
- By: Marlon James
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Cherise Boothe, Dwight Bacquie, and others
- Length: 26 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winner, The Man Booker Prize, 2015 Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters - assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts - A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 1970s, to the crack wars in 1980s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 1990s.
-
-
A Tough Read
- By KP on 05-07-16
By: Marlon James
-
It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
- By: Anne de Marcken
- Narrated by: Jessica Preddy
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.
-
-
The manner of which this book was written
- By Vanessa on 03-31-25
By: Anne de Marcken
-
33 Place Brugmann
- A Novel
- By: Alice Austen
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio, Jilly Bond, Nicholas Boulton, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of the Nazi occupation, in the heart of Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. Charlotte Sauvin, an art student raised by her beloved architect father in apartment 4L, knows all the details of the building and its people: how light falls on wood floors and voices echo off the marble staircase, the distinct knock of her dear friend, Julian Raphaël, the son of the art dealer’s family across the hall. Then the Raphaëls disappear, leaving everything behind but their priceless art collection, which has simply vanished.
-
-
A wonderful book
- By iggynut on 04-12-25
By: Alice Austen
-
The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
-
-
This One Should Win
- By K. Bella Bestia on 10-13-24
-
Evenings and Weekends
- A Novel
- By: Oisín McKenna
- Narrated by: Isabel Adomakoh-Young
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Summer in London stops for no one. Not the half-naked drunks and stoners, the bachelorette parties glugging from bejewelled bottles, the drag queens puffing on hurried cigarettes. It’s June 2019, and everyone has converged on the city’s parks, beer gardens, and street corners to revel in the collective joys of being alive. Everyone but Maggie. She’s 30, pregnant, and broke.
-
-
Amazing Narration
- By Kristen on 03-12-25
By: Oisín McKenna
-
On Beauty
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.
-
-
Somewhat Disappointed
- By Cherokee on 11-15-05
By: Zadie Smith
-
This Strange Eventful History
- By: Claire Messud
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family's strangeness; of François's union with Barbara; of Chloe, the result of that union.
-
-
Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration
- By Thomp/Suis on 05-17-24
By: Claire Messud
-
This Time Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Emma Straub
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Emma Straub
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday.
-
-
Loved!
- By AE on 05-25-22
By: Emma Straub
What listeners say about The English Understand Wool
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Brenda Hoffman
- 04-19-25
Bad taste is no way to live your life.
The slow burn of this short book made me read it again. A 17-year-old supposed girl who comes across as “cold” to her editor with bad taste is a hero to me and role model to friends with whom I’ve spleen to about this gem!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- unco
- 01-12-25
Thought Provoking
This is a gem of a book. I was surprised by character's astuteness and also by their understanding of the value of their education. I will be thinking about this for a long time. I had not yet encountered Helen Dewitt. This novella has introduced me to her as an author. I intend to read more.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- CCB
- 03-06-25
short story
excellent story. unexpected but likable characters. Interesting concept. I definitely wanted to hear more about the lead.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AudiobookMaven
- 11-24-24
The wild and crazy story, narrated brilliantly!
Utterly inventive story that grabs the reader's attention in the first sentence. International sensory stimulation and a truly inspired narrator
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- mswnola
- 01-09-25
The English understand humor
I loved the use of irony! And the compact length of the book made it a juicy and refreshing snack after the 40+ hour saga that was my last “read”.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!