Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of pregnancy loss.

Dept. of Speculation is narrated from the first-person point of view of the unnamed protagonist. For the first half of the novel, she refers to herself using first-person pronouns (“I”), and for the second half, she refers to herself as “the wife.” Her first-person pronouns return in the final chapter as she reclaims her individuality and identity both within and beyond the confines of her marriage. For the sake of clarity, the analytical sections of the guide refer to her character as “the narrator.”

The narrator is a woman living in Brooklyn, New York, teaching writing, and hoping to pursue an authorial career. Before she began working at the university, she worked as a fact checker. She later works for a former astronaut—ghostwriting “his book about the history of the space program” (38). Because these jobs don’t fulfill the narrator, she constantly longs to work on her own projects and often feels nostalgic about the days when she dreamed of devoting her life to her writing. Throughout the novel, she references notes that she’s jotting down and consistently incorporates passages from other writers, poets, philosophers, and scientists into her account.