In 1999, a young writer named Jenny Offill published a debut novel called “Last Things,†about a young child being home-schooled by a mother who is slowly going insane. The New York Times called the book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, “remarkable,†and The Los Angeles Times made Ms. Offill a finalist for its award to new writers.
Then Ms. Offill essentially retreated for 13 years. Now she has returned with a two-book deal with Vintage, a division of Random House, but it was a circuitous route back to the mainstream.
After the success of “Last Things,†Ms. Offill started a novel about Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor and futurist. She worked on it for three years, but in a bizarre coincidence, on the eve of finishing the book, she attended a reading where another writer read from a novel on the same subject. S he moved on.
She had a baby and wrote the words to picture books for Random House, including “17 Things I Am Not Allowed to Do Anymore.â€
Time passed. Ms. Offill edited two anthologies of essays and created and taught a course at Columbia about writing from the perspective of an unhinged narrator.
Then she finished another novel about a narrator who is coming apart as her husband cheats on her. That book, now titled “The Dept. of Speculation,†was sent to publishers at the end of last year and created a flurry of interest, according to her agent, Sally Wofford-Girand of Union Literary. More than eight houses bid on it.
Ms. Wofford-Girand said her client's book was elegant and extremely concise. “If your average book is a body, this is an X-ray,†she said.
In the end, that book became the first of the two-book deal with Vintage, where Ms. Offill's editor will be Jordan Pavlin, who has worked with writers including like Jennifer Egan.
People in publishing who spoke on the condition that they not be named say the final deal was for roughly $500,000 for two books. The foreign rights are still being auctioned. The first book will be released next January.
