"A book this sad shouldn't be so much fun to read. But contradictions are what you might expect from an author whose first novel was called Last Things. Fifteen years later, this is her second, and it was worth the wait. Dept. of Speculation is a riposte to the notion that domestic fiction is humdrum and unambitious. 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."
