Dept. of Speculation

Jenny Offill fulfills the roles of both author and narrator in this portrait of love and marriage. The chapters of her novel move quickly, flitting from topic to topic in a stream rather than a simple narration. She narrates evenly, though her words seem clipped. Though at first a little disconcerting, her approach fits her story perfectly. As "the wife" (as the story's protagonist is called) offers her story of courtship, marriage, motherhood, infidelity, and recovery, Offill's reading pulls the listener into her world and captures her experiences and emotions. At just over three hours, this is a quick listen--but a moving and memorable one. E.N. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from November 25, 2013
Popping prose and touching vignettes of marriage and motherhood fill Offill’s (Last Things) slim second book of fiction. Clever, subtle, and rife with strokes of beauty, this book is both readable in a single sitting and far ranging in the emotions it raises. The 46 short chapters are told mostly in brief fragments and fly through the life of the nameless heroine. Her mind wanders from everyday tasks and struggles, the beginnings of her marriage, the highs and lows with her husband, the joys of having a daughter. These domestic bits are contrasted by far-flung thoughts that whirl in every direction, from space aviation and sea exploration to ancient philosophy and Lynyrd Skynyrd lyrics. Anecdotes and quotes also come from all over: Einstein, Eliot, Keats, Rilke, Wittgenstein, Darwin, and Carl Sagan. Often, the use of third person places the heroine at a distance, examining the macro-reality of her life, but then Offill will zoom in, giving the reader a view into her heroine’s inner life—notes, graded papers and corrected manuscripts, monologues, imagined Christmas cards and questionnaires. Offill has equal parts cleverness and erudition, but it’s her language and eye for detail that make this a must-read: “Just after she turns five my daughter starts making confessions to me. It seems she is noticing her thoughts as thoughts for the first time and wants absolution.... I thought of stepping on her foot, but I didn’t. I tried to make her a little bit jealous. I pretended to be mad at him. ‘Everybody has bad thoughts,’ I tell her. ‘Just try not to act on them.’ ”