MixedThe Los Angeles Review of Books... a scrapbook that transcends spatial-temporal markers, drawing equally on the wisdom of Hesiod and F. Scott Fitzgerald as the protagonist tries to make sense of her present. Dept. of Speculation unfurls in an atmosphere of \'outer space,\' in which seemingly disconnected fragments are drawn together into mythic constellations of meaning ... brings to mind the domestically themed fiction of Lydia Davis ... The significance of the wife’s decontextualized anecdotes about raising her daughter can sometimes seem as puzzling as the recorded whale song on the Golden Record, but these sections surely hold charm (and even resonance) for readers who can fill in the gaps ... Ironically, while the novel’s atmosphere is as expansive and impersonal as outer space, the wife herself can seem narrow and excessively internal.
