Weather

by Jenny Offill

Hardcover, 208 pages

English language

Published Jan. 18, 2021 by Knopf Publishing Group.

ISBN:: 978-0-345-80690-1

(20 reviews)

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years, she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of western civilization.

As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and …

As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience — but still she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks... And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in — funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.

3 editions

Rachel Unkefer reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

Devastating

4 stars

This might be one of the most depressing and devastating books I’ve read on a long time. It’s so quiet and yet so affecting. The unnamed narrator navigates the mess of her personal and family life amid her growing awareness of climate disaster. She drops her kid off at school, tries to help her substance-addicted brother, and wonders how her marriage is holding up, all while ruminating about prepping and survival strategies and whether to move somewhere “safer” in anticipation of a dismal future. It’s depressing because of its familiarity, devastating because it’s like looking in a mirror during your late night bouts of doom and gloom.

The writing is great and the semi-stream-of-consciousness is very effective. This book would be good for those who aren’t already mired in the sort of rumination this narrator is. Lots of people need to read this book. Unfortunately I think I wasn’t one …

Erin reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

Review of 'Weather' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

2.5 stars. This was very meh. I am a cringey White liberal woman, but I don’t really want to read about one.

callan reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

very fitting for life in the end times

4 stars

I loved this because it was one of those books that makes me feel like I could write a book. But this was a great follow up to Why Fish Don’t Exist and a bridge back to All We Can Save and this is where I’m at right now. Cha cha.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

Review of 'Weather' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I really wanted to like it — so many of my friends have — but it just didn't work for me. The writing is tight, terse yet rich and really quite enjoyable, the kind I would normally devour... but the story itself felt flat. Affectless. Is that a thing now? It reminded me of [b:lost Children Archive|40245130|Lost Children Archive|Valeria Luiselli|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547386427l/40245130.SY75.jpg|62525285]: an ever-so-detached first-person narrator moving through the world but without really being part of it. A complete lack of connection. The whole book is bleakness, resignation. Not the fog of medication or apathy — her observations are too sharp at every level — just ... I don't know. I don't get it. A kind of going-through-the-motions thing, with exquisite awareness yet no spirit.

Bridgman reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

Review of 'Weather' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

[a:Jenny Offill|33794|Jenny Offill|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1566942988p2/33794.jpg]'s [b:Weather|37506228|Weather|Jenny Offill|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1566942482l/37506228.SY75.jpg|59116540] is a novella with large spaces between brief segments and you might feel a little cheated if you paid full price for it, like I did. (I swallow that sort of thing because I like supporting the small independent bookstore in my area.) But don't. It's got great depth for something so small, and even a few good jokes, though not of Offill's making.
And timely? Oh yeah. Now's the time to read it. It doesn't name names or give specific dates, but it's clear when it takes place.
My only regret is that I didn't set aside a rainy day and read this whole book that day. It'd be easy to do, even with someone with a gnat-like attention span like my own. I'm sure others will read it in one sitting, and that'd be a great way to read it.

GG reviewed Weather by Jenny Offill

Review of 'Weather' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Jenny Offil won’t be for everyone — her books are more like poetry, and don’t have much of a plot — but her writing style is a beautiful collection of perfectly-chosen words that manages to be both comforting and clever. Her books feel like my best friend telling me about her day, but with unexpected insights about life and the nature of relationships.