02367cam a2200349 i 4500003000800000005001700008007000300025008004100028020002900069020002600098035001300124040001800137041000800155042000800163050002300171082001200194100002700206245004200233246003000275264003800305300002000343520140800363650002301771650002701794650002601821650003001847650002201877650002701899650002601926650003001952856003501982BJBSDDR20230410132649.0ta130531s2014    nyu           000 1 eng    a9780385350815 (hardback)  a0385350813 (hardback)  a17759451  aDLCbspacDLC  aeng  apcc14aPS 3565bO32d 201400a813/.541 aOffill, Jenny, d1968-10aDept. of speculation /cJenny Offill.30aDepartment of speculation 1aNew York :bAlfred A.Knopf,c2014  a179 p. ;c19 cm  a"Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.  Jenny Offill's heroine, referred to in these pages as simply "the wife," once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes--a colicky baby, bedbugs, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions--the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it, as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.  With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation can be read in a single sitting, but there are enough bracing emotional insights in these pages to fill a much longer novel. "--cProvided by publisher. 0aMarriagevFiction. 4aMatrimoniovFicción. 0aFamily lifevFiction. 4aVida familiarvFicción. 0aDomestic fiction. 0aPsychological fiction. 4aNovela estadounidense 4aLiteratura estadounidense423Cover imageu9780385350815.jpg