Dept. of Speculation (Vintage Contemporaries)

Books on the Nightstand recommend this one and they didn't get it wrong:

Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation is a read-in-one-sitting powerhouse of a novel, full of emotion and gorgeousness. It’s a look at a woman who is suffering a crisis in her marriage, written in the form of letters that read like journal entries. This isn’t an easy book to describe, but it’s a novel that works on many different levels and is quite unique in style.

This is a cr...read more

Full of short prose of the running thoughts of the main character, it was interesting to see the author depict the character referring to herself from I/myself to the wife with moments of she/her. It was as if the main character was trying to find themselves in the identity of becoming a partner to a mother to the individual character. The short random facts and proverbs were interesting distractions and running concepts to the storyline.

This was a very quick read. I enjoyed the style of the book and it's that factor more than anything else that would lead me to recommend it. There isn't much plot, and where there is- it took a dark turn. I wasn't prepared for the dark turn from the beginning of the book but that's pretty accurate to real life. There was a lot that was left off the page in a way I didn't think was ideal.