Dept. of Speculation

Ouch.

3.5 stars, although I suspect if I take the time to re-read this more slowly and carefully, I will appreciate it to a greater extent.

Well written but a bummer story.

between 3.5 and 4 ish.

Really liked it until the husband's infidelity. After that point, it got a little chaotic, which I guess is part of the point.

This is a wandering story touching on so many different wandering topics, but at its core this is a story about the day to day workings of a marriage. I am completely in love with Jenny Offill's writing. Her short vignettes often seem disjointed and unconnected but as you press on through the book they slot together like jigsaw pieces, and by the time you get to the last page the whole picture has been revealed in all its glory. Skillful, deft, and pretty much perfect.

I think I would like this more if I experienced being an adult a bit longer. I'm only 21 and this book made me feel like I was 13.

The writing confused me at times, and there was a chunk near the end where the story kind of got blurry?
I liked the book, I love reading about the ups and downs of a relationship but the writing really threw me off multiple times.

I'll come back to this when I'm way older!

Disjointed and fragmented while remaining compelling.

Beautiful. Fragments. From whole to cracked to reformed.

Did not get it.

(To start: There's something disconcerting about reading a grownup book by an author you considered a children's picture book author. Where, for example, are the pictures? And she knows (and uses) those words? Who knew?)

Once I got past that, I settled in nicely to this small novel. Our main character, known only as “the wife,” is deep into her marriage and everything has changed and she really wants to understand why.

I love the way Offill roams all over the place in her writing, almost like little poems, or moments, that link inexplicably in the way our real lives flow and link. More, more, more.

My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.

book is too devastating to handle

The voice and form were interesting, the subject matter . . . not so much. A marriage flounders on the rocks of infidelity. If it's not about more than that, it's hard to hold my interest.

A story of a marriage told in fragments like memories recalled looking back over the span of years. As one critic puts it: “They are like your cleverest friend's Facebook updates”. Reading it, I just couldn't hold on to the centre of it and it sort of flew apart in my hands.

I just couldn't connect to the characters. I couldn't get involved, I didn't care as much as I should have.

Certain lines are beautiful, or heartbreaking, or both. There are chapters where the book easily reaches five-star quality. Those pieces will stick with me, I'm sure. But the book as a whole will not.