Dept. of Speculation

This one I loved for the style as much as the character. I love the use of fragments to weave together a life and it felt true to the life of a mother—that a mother only gets snippets of time to piece together her story and her thoughts. I also loved that Offil was wrestling with such a big issue—how to hold onto oneself while giving so much of your self to a child.    

I’m recommending this book because it is smart, original, mesmerizing, and beguiling and because that smart, original, and beguiling voice is a mother’s. Told in fragments of text that are like stepping stones to a broader narrative, this poetic book can be read very quickly. 

I love this book because its form—fragments of short, gorgeous prose—and poetic language give Offill’s narrative a unique dimension and texture, which is thereby given to the topic of mothers and motherhood.

Offill’s book reads like a contemporary John Updike slathered in poetry.

The relationship at the center of the book is something we view through the honeyed distortion of language, but don’t all relationships have their own honeyed distortions? The beginnings of the relationship are beautiful, and so are the endings because every spring and every fall are natural inversions of one another.

As a result, Offill’s version of love is one I find deeply affecting. She whispers secrets to me, telling me that every tragedy contains within it the hope and beauty of some fresh-feathered beginning, a beginning, in fact,… show more.

One of the most original voices in contemporary fiction, Offill’s novel is unusual and from my perspective, brilliant. Perspective is what makes this book shine, the story is so direct it feels as if it is originating in the narrator’s innermost thoughts. Weaving facts and articles with slices of daily routine with the narrator’s own thoughts, the reader is propelled forward, almost a participant in the gradual transformation of the narrator as she comes to terms with her husband’s betrayal.  This short, spare book is hard to put down, wise in ways that are hard to articulate and yet Offill… show more.