The Rumor Bureau is an expansive portrait of one family, but it is also a fascinating meditation on the mysteries of intimacy and trust and the state of universal shipwreck that unites us all. The heroine of the novel falls in love, gets married, gives birth to a daughter, teaches literary arts, fights bedbugs in her apartment, goes to yoga, tries to realize that her husband has a mistress, but this is external. In fact, the primary feeling is that everything in the world is connected: our everyday life, full of little things, and the words of Keats, Kafka, Rilke; love letters stamped “Rumour Bureau” and the desperate experiences of Russian cosmonauts; Tender maternal love and advice to housewives for 1896. Jenny Offill writes with cool precision, language that shimmers with fury, wit and furious angst. She managed to create an exquisitely captivating story about the impermanence of things and their elusive beauty.