- Published: 17/08/2023
- ISBN: 9781783789344
- Granta Books
- 192 pages
Dept. of Speculation
Jenny Offill
They used to send each other letters. The return address was always the same: Dept. of Speculation.
They used to be young, brave, and giddy with hopes for their future. They got married, had a child, and skated through all the small calamities of family life. But then, slowly, quietly something changes. As the years rush by, fears creep in and doubts accumulate until finally their life as they know it cracks apart and they find themselves forced to reassess what they have lost, what is left, and what they want now.
Written with the dazzling lucidity of poetry, Dept. of Speculation navigates the jagged edges of a modern marriage to tell a story that is darkly funny, surprising and wise.
£9.99
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
10 Best Books of the Year, 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
John Self, Guardian
From the Same Author
Weather
Jenny Offill
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020
‘This is so good. We are not ready nor worthy’ Ocean Vuong
‘What are you afraid of, he asks me and the answer of course is dentistry, humiliation, scarcity, then he says what are your most useful skills? People think I’m funny’
Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practise her other calling: as an unofficial shrink. For years, she has supported her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but then her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.
As she dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you’ve seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to acknowledge the limits of what she can do. But if she can’t save others, then what, or who, might save her?
And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in–funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.
Jenny Offill on Granta.com
In Conversation | The Online Edition
Podcast | Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
We discuss her new book, Weather, on the Granta Podcast.
‘Yes, it's dire. Yes, we're not sure what to do. Does that mean we have nothing to do?’
Granta Books Writing | Granta Books
In Conversation
Jenny Offill & Mark O'Connell
‘This isn’t the end of the world. It’s history going about its business. This isn’t the last apocalypse by a long shot.’
Jenny Offill, author of Weather, talks to Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from the Apocalypse.
Five Things Right Now | Granta Books
Five Things Right Now: Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation, shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.
