of flowing scenes that keep you reassuringly grounded in plot, but a
collection of vignettes, observations and quirky details that are
sometimes pulled from real life. Not to mention the fact that the
characters, a young couple, are referred to only as "the husband" and
"the wife." No names are ever used.
If all that scares you off, I should tell you: be brave. The book is
absorbing and highly readable. It's also intriguing, beautifully written,
sly and often profound. I loved getting a glimpse of the way a couple
navigates the world and their own little terrain. The wife remarks,
"The reason to have a home is to keep certain people in and everyone
else out. A home has a perimeter. But sometimes our perimeter was
breached by neighbors, by Girl Scouts, by Jehovah's Witnesses. I
never liked to hear the doorbell ring. None of the people I liked ever
turned up that way."
And then, two pages later, extending the theme of home and its
meanings, but quietly moving into painful territory, Offill writes, " ...
when we signed the lease, we were happy about the jungle gym
because I'd learned that I was pregnant and we could imagine its uses.
But by the time we moved in, we had found out that the baby's heart
had stopped and now it just made us sad to look out the window at it."
It's kind of amazing the way a nameless character, living a life that is
missing a lot of specifics, could evoke a kind of sorrowful feeling in
me. The details, even though spare, drew me in, and I began to form
pictures and full scenes in my mind in response to them. Maybe our
minds crave story so badly that we'll just go ahead and create it out of
whatever raw materials are put in front of us.
i
Dept. of Speculation is Jenny Offill's second novel.
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Le portrait magazine