Little people, Edison called them." Her thoughts and recollections have an aphoristic neatness to them, enhanced by the way each paragraph is set alone on the page, white space above and below. "Tiny particles that swarm together and apart. "Memories are microscopic," the woman says. The story is told in fragments, like memories that float in when you're trying to think about other things. There aren't many characters, and no one is named: there is the husband, their daughter and a few acquaintances. From the point of view of an unnamed American woman, it gives us the hurrahs and boos of daily life, of marriage and of parenthood, with exceptional originality, intensity and sweetness. Dept. of Speculation is a riposte to the notion that domestic fiction is humdrum and unambitious. Fifteen years later, this is her second, and it was worth the wait. But contradictions are what you might expect from an author whose first novel was called Last Things. A book this sad shouldn't be so much fun to read.
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