Admired by critics, adored by readers, Dept. of Speculation is an annihilating, electrifying account of marriage and motherhood, love and madness
JENNY OFFILL is the author of Last Things (Bloomsbury, 1999) which was chosen as notable or best book of the year by the Guardian, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and was a finalist for the LA Times First Fiction Prize. She teaches Creative Writing at Columbia University, and is on the faculty at Brooklyn College and Queens University of Charlotte.
Offill's slender and cannily paced novel, her second, assembles
fragments, observations, meditations and different points of view
to chart the course of a troubled marriage. Wry and devastating in
equal measure, the novel is a cracked mirror that throws light in
every direction - on music and literature; science and philosophy;
marriage and motherhood and infidelity; and especially love and the
grueling rigors of domestic life. Part elegy and part primal
scream, it's a profound and unexpectedly buoyant performance
*The New York Times*
Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation resembles no book I've read
before. If I tell you that it's funny, and moving, and true; that
it's as compact and mysterious as a neutron; that it tells a
profound story of love and parenthood while invoking (among others)
Keats, Kafka, Einstein, Russian cosmonauts, and advice for the
housewife of 1897, will you please simply believe me, and read
it?
*Michael Cunningham*
With exceptional originality, intensity and sweetness [...] Dept.
of Speculation is a shattered novel that stabs and sparkles at the
same time. It is the kind of book that you will be quoting over and
over to friends who don't quite understand, until they give in and
read it too
*Guardian*
A heartbreaking and exceptional book by a writer who doesn't settle
for less... Sad, funny, philosophical, at once deeply poetic and
deeply engaging, this is a brilliant, soulful elegy to the
hardships and joys of married life
*My Happy Life*
In this slim, beautiful work, the short paragraphs read as a series
of carefully crafted vignettes, linked yet strong enough to stand
alone... It is about life, unvarnished, yet every bit of it made
profound by Offill's glorious prose
*Financial Times*
[A] fascinating examination of the complexity of the female
writer's post-childbirth experience of work as well as an astute,
unsentimental portrayal of a foundering marriage
*Guardian*
Dept. of Speculation is gorgeous, funny, a profound and profoundly
moving work of art. Jenny Offill is a master of form and feeling,
and she gets life on the page in new, startling ways
*The Fun Parts*
Written with such clarity and poetry... at times almost unbearably
moving. And yet it has some intensely funny and witty moments
too
*'Books of the Year' Guardian*
I have read and re-read Dept. of Speculation. It manages to
reinvent the whole medium of the novel. And that's certainly not
something you see every day. Ingenious, moving and refreshing
*Sunday Herald*
A novel that... glitters with different emotional colors... It's
often extremely funny and often painful... its depth and intensity
make a stealthy purchase on the reader
*New Yorker*
Dense with intelligence and life... Offill is incisive on the
pleasures, terrors and frustrations of parenthood... [She] reveals
depth and beauty in small, mundane things
*Prospect*
A tiny gem of a read... A delicate yet harmonious examination of
love, beautifully written and engaging... Funny, sad and clever,
the best book I've read in a long time
*Stylist ******
This delicious sliver of a book does what only the best epistolary
novels can: it forces the heart and mind into direct contact, one
lush, lovely line at a time. I've found not only a new beloved
author in Offill but also a witty new friend in the wife.
*Taiye Selasi*
Offill's writing is exquisitely honed and vibrant
*Library Journal*
Observed moments of boredom, joy and terror are the triumph of this
novel, spilling panic, pain and confusion of marriage and
motherhood on to the page.... Brilliant
*Sunday Telegraph *****
Popping prose and touching vignettes of marriage and motherhood
fill [this book]... Offill has equal parts cleverness and
erudition, but it's her language and eye for detail that make this
a must-read
*Publishers Weekly starred review*
A short, intense, poetic look at modern life, marriage and
motherhood... Painful, questing, wise and funny... One to watch
*Bookseller*
Fifteen years ago, Offill made an auspicious debut with Last
Things. Dept. of Speculation is her second. It is a book so
radiant, so sparkling with sunlight and sorrow, that it almost
makes a person gasp
*Boston Globe*
Offill has successfully met the challenge she seems to have given
herself: write only what needs to be written, and nothing more...
Absorbing, highly readable, intriguing, beautifully written, sly
and often profound
*NPR*
So beautifully written that it begs multiple reads... [It] doesn't
just resign itself to the disappointment of failed dreams that crop
up in middle age. Instead, endurance to the end of a crisis
generates wisdom, hope and, perhaps, even art... This is
soul-bearing fiction at its best
*Pittsburgh Post-Gazette*
Offill writes with intuitive understanding... This carefully
carpentered novel [...] builds into a genuinely moving story of
love lost and perhaps, provisionally, recovered
*New York Times*
Motherhood, geeky facts and a sprinkling of great thoughts create a
riveting addition to female abandonment literature... this jewel of
a book [is] a novel as funny, honest and beguiling as any I have
read
*LA Times*
Startling and memorable... [This] is a novel that looks to writers
like Rilke, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf for inspiration as
to what novel writing can be-fluid, observational, rawly emotional
at times... there is as much wisdom to be found in its pithy
riddles and maxims as in a thousand-page epic
*Daily Beast*
Singular... 10/10
*May We Be Forgiven*
[It] is the sort of book which, if you went through it with a
pencil, underlining quotable lines, would end up being entirely
underlined. I finished it in one sitting then went straight back to
the beginning, wondering why other writers don't write like this...
Magnificent [and] very funny
*Irish Sunday Independent*
Funny and absorbing, an effortless-seeming downhill ride that picks
up astonishing narrative speed as it goes
*New York Review of Books*
The narrator's bone-dry wit punctures any hint of self-pity...
Perfectly conjures the scattered thoughts of a creative,
disorganised mind
*Times Literary Supplement*
Stunning... It's almost impossible to reinvent the novel as a form
these days but [this] does just that... As soon as I finished it, I
turned it over and started again
*The Hand that First Held Mine*
There are sentences in good novels that make you swoon with just
how perfect they are at saying something true. This novel is made
up almost entirely of sentences like that. This is the work of a
master writer
*Guardian*
Very funny, very sad
*Daily Telegraph*
[A] sublime little novel which I have already read a half-dozen
times. Offill has a journalist's eye for the funny and weird... I
have laughed over her best, funniest jokes even when they are no
longer new to me. Reading [this book] is like finding that the
stars are still visible in the biggest, brightest city, if we
remember to look for them.
*The Washington Post*
[A] delectable and generous book: the novel of a marriage, written
with elegance and wisdom and learning in bittersweet paragraphs
*TLS*
A formal experiment that never seems forced or precious, it's a
small marvel of economy and wit
*TLS*
I enjoyed [this] dark and spiky story of marital breakdown
*Guardian*
The best novel I read this year... I keep finding excuses to quote
the opening lines
*Observer*
An elliptical, deeply intelligent meditation on parental and
romantic love
*Observer*
Extraordinary... Depressing? Far from it. Heartbreaking, yes;
angry; but also very funny
*Radio Times*
An absolute stonker: it's a brilliant, brilliant book. Rich and
rewarding and beautiful and heartbreaking... I fear it may ruin my
reading for the rest of the year. It's extraordinary
*Just William's Luck*
Brilliant... oddly invigorating, like a strong martini
*Metro*
The pleasure of the story lies in the poetry of Jenny Offill's
words... Exquisite and sublime
*Surrey Edit*
The writing is clever, the pacing is fast... Poetic in style and
philosophical in substance
*Yorkshire Evening Post*
Arresting... I cried both times I read it
*3:AM Magazine*
It's funny, sad and beautifully observed
*A Life in Books blog*
An amazing book... I almost missed a flight because I was tearing
up
*Swamplandia!*
A triumph on a small scale but in a major key
*Sydney Morning Herald*
A beguilingly original novel made up of snatched moments and brief
anecdotes... an exploded portrait of parenthood, creative identity
and a marriage in crisis; wistful, sad and very funny
*Guardian*
I steer readers towards Offill's breath-of-fresh-air Dept. of
Speculation
*Irish Times*
Deft, brilliant and brave
*Irish Times*
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Offill lays bare the quiet
madness of love, and the result is a profound and affecting
read
*Irish Times*
[A] gorgeous, crystalline look at marriage, parenthood and writer's
block that is so intimate, multiple readers (myself included) have
had to keep reminding themselves that it wasn't written for them
personally. Each carefully sculpted paragraph glints with insight
and verve and wit
*Edmonton Journal*
Offill's book delicately examines the minutiae of a modern
marriage. With so much conveyed in so few words, it's simply
brilliant
*Stylist*
Aphoristic, dazzling and inventive, Dept. of Speculation has more
jokes in it than any other book I read this year, but doesn't
sacrifice resonance. Its approach - discrete paragraphs with no
straightforward narrative flow - makes it sound a challenge, but
purest pleasure is what I remember about it
*Asylum*
Original and accessible... It's a triumph of compression and
compassion
*Financial Times*
It was my favourite book of last year and I keep returning to it.
Compelling [and] heartbreaking... This is writing at its inventory,
original best and I can't wait to see what Offill will do next
*Daily Mail*
I read just recently Dept. of Speculation, which I thought was
fantastic. I loved it. It was very sad and beautiful and very
unique. You know when you read a book and the author just has a
voice you haven't heard before? It's like that. I hadn't heard that
voice before
*David Duchovny*
Offill is completely brilliant on the raw impotence of a mother's
love... not to mention the mundane brutality of marital betrayal...
Beautifully devastating, Dept. of Speculation is a worthy inclusion
on this year's Folio prize shortlist
*Observer*
Dept. of Speculation is a shattered novel that stabs and sparkles
at the same time. It is the kind of book that you will be quoting
over and over to friends who don't quite understand, until they
give in and read it, too
*Guardian*
Dept. of Speculation is a shattered novel that stabs and sparkles
at the same time. It is the kind of book that you will be quoting
over and over to friends who don't quite understand, until they
give in and read it, too
*Guardian*
Original... a story [with] strong emotional impact
*Herald*
This is a novel of snapshots; about love, work, parenthood and
more, that builds to a coherent and satisfying whole. I loved the
day-to-day observations: so recognisable, grounded and true and yet
the next paragraph along always surprised me... You'll get to the
end and then start all over again
*Metro*
Wry, funny and full of truth
*The Gloss*
Rich [and] satisfying... Offill's novel is a life raft: read it for
its unsentimental scoop on love, the breaking of something good,
and the possibility of patching the cracks and pulling through
*Independent*
Jenny Offill has such a specific way of writing, and her words
touch something very deep in me
*actress Clémence Poésy*
In this fast-paced, fractured text [...] brief first-person
paragraphs, aphorisms and quotations built in tension... As these
diary-like entries build, so, too, does the claustrophobia that
domesticity can bring... Such observed moments of boredom, joy and
terror are the triumph of this novel, spilling the panic, pain and
confusion or marriage and motherhood onto the page
*Belfast Telegraph*
About as close to a perfect novel as you can get
*Waterstones podcast*
Wryly subversive
*Guardian*
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