13. The Dept. of Speculation

By Jenny Offill  

The trade paperback edition was a Xmas gift from my BIL, as Offill’s second novel made quite a splash when it came out in 2014.  I had never heard of this book before.  According to this Guardian article:

   The plot of Jenny Offill's second novel,  Dept. of Speculation, doesn't sound promising:  "If someone had described this novel to me, I would never have read it."

I wouldn’t have wanted to read it either. 

 

Since my BIL enjoys fat fantasy, sci fi and other genre novels, I originally assumed the book was going to be something along these lines. The title and cover certainly evoked a dystopian setting.

 

Instead, Dept. of Speculation was a literary novel about the disintegration of a marriage from the point of view of the woman. The title refered to the return address the couple used to use when they wrote each other letters at the beginning of their relationship.

 

It was definitely a case of what Offill said: ‘I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you can say the most with the least’. 

 

Flipping through the pages you can that the text is laid out in an experimental, small press format.  On the one hand, I appreciated the fragmentary thought processes, and much of the content was dead on in its frankness, humour and clarity.  Overall though, I just got fleeting impressions. This was fine by me, as I certainly didn’t want to immerse myself in the protagonist’s emotional agony and misery. 

 

One of my favourite passages:

That year we get Christmas cards from his relatives, some with those family letters tucked inside. S got a promotion and is now a vice president of marketing. T has a new baby and has started an organizing business called “Sorted!” L & V have given up rice and sugar and bread.

 

My husband won’t let me write one. We send a smiling picture instead.

 

Dear Family and Friends,

 

It is the year of the bugs. It is the year of the pig. It is the year of losing money. It is the year of getting sick. It is the year of no books. It is the year of no music. It is the year of turning 5 and 39 and 37. It is the year of Wrong Living. That is how we will remember it if it ever passes.

 

With love and holiday wishes.

I have never written a Christmas letter and never had a desire to, even after having a kid. But if I did, it would be an adulterated version like that one, The Xmas Letter of Real Living. 

 

The novel also touched on maternal “ambivalence”, and the “art monster”.  Due to the attention DoS received, Offill's first novel, Last Things, got reissued.  It's told from the perspective of an eight-year-old girl being home-schooled by her increasingly unstable mother (“another book that if described to me I would not wish to read”).

 

Side note:

 

I never learned the mnemonic that was taught to American school children about the order of planets in the solar system.  Here's a clever quote from DoS:

 

My Very Educated Mother Just Serves Us Noodles. This the mnemonic they give her to remember the order of planets.

But what about Pluto? My Very Educated Mother Just Serves Us Nice Pancakes?