RaveThe New York Journal of Books... a profoundly sad look at a marriage dissected with all its blood and gore and visceral beauty laid out in perfectly placed lines of prose ... Ms. Jenny Offill owns the word poignancy with her second novel. The book may be tiny, but it’s marvelously huge in insight and honesty. Rich with humor, and deep with despair, Dept. of Speculation paints a masterful portrait of the nuts and the bolts and the warts and the silky splendor that defines commitment—the commitment to live in close quarters with other humans ... a quick, beautiful read that will draw out joy just as quickly as sadness, and may even cause one to pause and then wonder, and then to finally embrace both the misery and the magic of marriage.
