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Dept. Of Speculation (2014)

by Jenny Offill(Favorite Author)

4.12 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0385350813 (ISBN13: 9780385350815)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Knopf

review 1: Very short novel that is written sparsely..almost poetic in bullet like short paragraph punches. Some humorous, others gut-wrenchingly painful. Love's young dream to the disintegration of a marriage where the reader is left to fill the gaps. No names - just the wife, the daughter, the girl etc. I found this narrative very powerful with the hint of the raw emotions provoking more of a response than I normally pick up in more over-written novels.
review 2: This book had the book club very divided. We either loved it or hated it. I found myself on the loved it side. I think the author tried to duplicate thought and the self-doubt individuals feel about themselves and their relationships. The protagonist in the story is a woman plagued with self-doubt. To me, i... moret read like a journal, taking moments in time and exploring the emotion of that moment. She deals with a child who has colic, the moment she discovers her husband has been cheating, and other in-the-moment crises of an ordinary life. There is a dearth of plot, and this bothered many in the book club, but to me, there was a verisimilitude to the actual doubts so many of us face on a daily basis. Not an easy book, but an interesting one. less

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