Spotlight: Jenny Offill’s “Dept. of Speculation”

Dept. of Speculation is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation is a novel to be devoured in a single sitting, though its bracing emotional insights and piercing meditations on despair and love will linger long after the last page. — Random House

Join NYFA and Jenny Offill (Fellowship, Fiction, 2006) at Barnes and Noble on Feb. 18