Dept. of Speculation
by Jenny Offill
2014 / 180 pages
rating: 9.5 / contemp fiction (experimental?)
Contrary to some of what I’ve read about this book, it has a plot. Stuff does happen to interesting characters in chronological order and it fits – there’s a certain tension about it and the reader wonders how is this going to turn out. It’s just that parts of the plot are missing and the fictional characters are without names.
No, although I was tempted, I’m not going to annotate a 180-page novel which is basically about a woman whose desire is to create monster art but ends up side-tracked by marriage and family. Offill included a lot of interesting things in it though. Sometimes the references are just names, other times there’s a whole quote by someone usually associated with science and space or philosophy and religion – or psychology maybe. It’s a very literary novel – experimental in some ways.
