'The Wife' once exchanged love letters with her husband, postmarked the Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty in life and the confines of a long relationship. As they confront many common problems, the Wife puzzles over the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and romantic love. She analyzes her predicament, offering ferocious, wry, often devastating reflections on matrimony, motherhood, artistic ambition, and condition of the universal shipwreck of midlife.