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Weather
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 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.
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.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published February 11, 2020
2023 people are currently reading
52066 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Offill
20 books1,857 followersJenny Offill is an American author born in Massachusetts. Her first novel Last Things was published in 1999 was a New York Times Notable book and a finalist for the L.A Times First Book Award.
She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books She teaches in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Columbia University and Queens University.
She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books She teaches in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Columbia University and Queens University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,932 reviews
January 23, 2024
This book made me feel like I have adhd, mild depression, and severe anxiety oh wait
July 6, 2020
Meditative. Reminds me of Renata Adler. A bit too free form for me but the book’s overall project is interesting. I admire Offill’s intelligence and razor sharp wit which this book has in abundance.
March 3, 2020
weather noun
: the state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time
weather transitive verb
: to come safely through a difficult period or experience
“First they came for the coral, but I did not say anything because I was not a coral.”
I loved every minute of Weather. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, thanks to the choppy style, specific brand of humour and refusal to deliver conventional narrative movement, but I thought it was brilliant.
This novel is both sardonic and warm, reflective of our anxious times but also strangely reassuring. It’s got wit and wisdom and a fantastic narrative voice in librarian Lizzie.
There are plot threads—Lizzie meets an attractive stranger; supports her addict brother; works as an assistant for the charismatic Sylvia who hosts a climate change podcast called “Hell or High Water”; becomes obsessed with doomsday preppers—but these threads don't go very far. This is a novel more concerned with potentialities, the tension of the time before, of something about to happen. This extends not just to domestic worries, but an impending existential doom.
Inaction and indecision permeate Weather, as does the ‘incredulity response’: the human tendency to freeze up in a crisis, the brain unable to take in what is happening. As much as this novel delights in absurdity, its comedy is freighted with darkness.
“A turtle was mugged by a gang of snails. The police came to take a report, but (the turtle) couldn’t help them. ‘It all happened so fast,’ he said.”
: the state of the atmosphere at a particular place and time
weather transitive verb
: to come safely through a difficult period or experience
“First they came for the coral, but I did not say anything because I was not a coral.”
I loved every minute of Weather. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, thanks to the choppy style, specific brand of humour and refusal to deliver conventional narrative movement, but I thought it was brilliant.
This novel is both sardonic and warm, reflective of our anxious times but also strangely reassuring. It’s got wit and wisdom and a fantastic narrative voice in librarian Lizzie.
There are plot threads—Lizzie meets an attractive stranger; supports her addict brother; works as an assistant for the charismatic Sylvia who hosts a climate change podcast called “Hell or High Water”; becomes obsessed with doomsday preppers—but these threads don't go very far. This is a novel more concerned with potentialities, the tension of the time before, of something about to happen. This extends not just to domestic worries, but an impending existential doom.
Inaction and indecision permeate Weather, as does the ‘incredulity response’: the human tendency to freeze up in a crisis, the brain unable to take in what is happening. As much as this novel delights in absurdity, its comedy is freighted with darkness.
“A turtle was mugged by a gang of snails. The police came to take a report, but (the turtle) couldn’t help them. ‘It all happened so fast,’ he said.”
December 27, 2019
When one reads as many book as I do, the search for something different but good, is ongoing. This author seems to fill the bill. She takes the reader inside the thoughts of a young woman, Lizzie, who is juggling many of life's trials. She is a mother, a wife, tried to take care of her mother, and her brother who has had a problem with drugs. Additionally, the doomsday prediction with the climate and the unfriendly political situation, also preys on her mind. She works in a university library, sans degree, due to the help of her mentor, and has been convinced to answer letters by said mentor, with a podcast called, Hell or high water. She is a very busy, too busy, young woman. She is also a character that is very relateable.
The book is written in snippets of thoughts, an inner monologue that skips from thought to thought. When one ponders this way of writing fiction, this structure, one realizes that this is the way one thinks. Our inner thoughts actually are like this, we don't think in a long diatribe but often short observations.
I really enjoyed this, not only does it make for a quick read, but it was never boring. It also adequately captured what was going on in her life, in an unusual but effective format. We can see just how much she is struggling for balance in this too busy life, and how she handles the many different strands.
ARC by publisher.
The book is written in snippets of thoughts, an inner monologue that skips from thought to thought. When one ponders this way of writing fiction, this structure, one realizes that this is the way one thinks. Our inner thoughts actually are like this, we don't think in a long diatribe but often short observations.
I really enjoyed this, not only does it make for a quick read, but it was never boring. It also adequately captured what was going on in her life, in an unusual but effective format. We can see just how much she is struggling for balance in this too busy life, and how she handles the many different strands.
ARC by publisher.
April 28, 2020
Almost the Blues
What the new world of literary America consists of perhaps: diary entries; the not quite aphorisms of a typical NYC life; the recording of trivia amidst cataclysmic events. There is obviously a selection of things to be noted/published. But there are no conclusions or points to be made. Whatever story there is is left to the reader’s imagination. Blanks are filled in and events connected by the same process that one unconsciously corrects errors and typos in print copy.
Weather is a sort of literary phenomenology, an attempt to present just what occurs to consciousness. In this case, the consciousness of a university librarian of middle-age, middle-income, middle-brow, and middle of the road politics during the election of Donald Trump. “Everything is happening much faster than expected,” says one of the bit-players. There is confusion and consternation; but life goes on.
It is only the various nutcases whom the librarian encounters who are concerned about ‘the big picture.’ “But what’s going to happen to the American weather?” one red-faced man cries. Another promotes the GOOD NEWS of some evangelical sect. A good friend and mentor is all about something to do with Native American rights (or is it environmental issues?) and needs help responding to the thousands of emails from her fans worried about every conceivable physical, environmental, and spiritual disaster. “Take care of your teeth,” the dotty neighbour warns. And life goes on.
Pressing issues nag from every side: how to spot a terrorist; emigration to Israel; engaging with plans for world peace; dealing with the unpleasantness of individual human beings on the subway. Then there’s the tedium of dealing with an addicted brother whose primary talent is haplessness. The television and YouTube provide distractions - from the most effective forms of self-harm to the monks of Mount Athos to Buddhist practice to sex robots. Whom to choose to accompany you on your apocalyptic ‘doomstead’ is a chronic worry. Planning for disaster is never finished. And life, of course, goes on.
My opinion: these people are pretty far up their own backsides. Not being able to decide what is important is a fatal condition. Such downtrodden lives. From the Have a Heart humane mousetrap to the coy liaison with the sexy French Canadian, it’s all too tragically precious. 1960’s Frisco hippiedom morphed into 21st century Brooklyn Heights grandchildren. Life does go on for these folk. Thank goodness it isn’t mine.
What the new world of literary America consists of perhaps: diary entries; the not quite aphorisms of a typical NYC life; the recording of trivia amidst cataclysmic events. There is obviously a selection of things to be noted/published. But there are no conclusions or points to be made. Whatever story there is is left to the reader’s imagination. Blanks are filled in and events connected by the same process that one unconsciously corrects errors and typos in print copy.
Weather is a sort of literary phenomenology, an attempt to present just what occurs to consciousness. In this case, the consciousness of a university librarian of middle-age, middle-income, middle-brow, and middle of the road politics during the election of Donald Trump. “Everything is happening much faster than expected,” says one of the bit-players. There is confusion and consternation; but life goes on.
It is only the various nutcases whom the librarian encounters who are concerned about ‘the big picture.’ “But what’s going to happen to the American weather?” one red-faced man cries. Another promotes the GOOD NEWS of some evangelical sect. A good friend and mentor is all about something to do with Native American rights (or is it environmental issues?) and needs help responding to the thousands of emails from her fans worried about every conceivable physical, environmental, and spiritual disaster. “Take care of your teeth,” the dotty neighbour warns. And life goes on.
Pressing issues nag from every side: how to spot a terrorist; emigration to Israel; engaging with plans for world peace; dealing with the unpleasantness of individual human beings on the subway. Then there’s the tedium of dealing with an addicted brother whose primary talent is haplessness. The television and YouTube provide distractions - from the most effective forms of self-harm to the monks of Mount Athos to Buddhist practice to sex robots. Whom to choose to accompany you on your apocalyptic ‘doomstead’ is a chronic worry. Planning for disaster is never finished. And life, of course, goes on.
My opinion: these people are pretty far up their own backsides. Not being able to decide what is important is a fatal condition. Such downtrodden lives. From the Have a Heart humane mousetrap to the coy liaison with the sexy French Canadian, it’s all too tragically precious. 1960’s Frisco hippiedom morphed into 21st century Brooklyn Heights grandchildren. Life does go on for these folk. Thank goodness it isn’t mine.
March 8, 2020
I don't think this is a bad book at all, I want to make that clear right away. I think Jenny Offill is a talented writer, and that she achieves everything she set out to achieve with this little book, a potent commentary on the impossibility of balancing every day domesticity with encroaching anxiety about the climate crisis.
But with that said... I didn't particularly like it? I mostly found this book incredibly forgettable. It was a short, breezy read, but for whatever reason I didn't have time to read it in a single sitting, and every time I put it down and picked it back up, I couldn't remember where I had left off. I had to constantly remind myself who was who - Ben, Eli, Henry, I think were their names, but even now I couldn't tell you who was the husband, brother, and son - and there was nothing about Lizzie's story in particular that justified to me why this was the particular story that Offill chose to tell. I ultimately just needed a bit more from it, but I think that's on me rather than the author. Maybe I've just read a few too many navel-gazing literary novels lately for this to shine through.
But with that said... I didn't particularly like it? I mostly found this book incredibly forgettable. It was a short, breezy read, but for whatever reason I didn't have time to read it in a single sitting, and every time I put it down and picked it back up, I couldn't remember where I had left off. I had to constantly remind myself who was who - Ben, Eli, Henry, I think were their names, but even now I couldn't tell you who was the husband, brother, and son - and there was nothing about Lizzie's story in particular that justified to me why this was the particular story that Offill chose to tell. I ultimately just needed a bit more from it, but I think that's on me rather than the author. Maybe I've just read a few too many navel-gazing literary novels lately for this to shine through.
February 12, 2020
NOW AVAILABLE!!
fun fact about that line, beyond the “fuck, yeah!” of it in my heart: the verb between “I” and “sure” is missing in my ARC, so the quote is totes [sic], but i’m 2/3 convinced that the word was intentionally omitted. as the novel draws to its close (and that is on page 170 of the ARC's 201 pages), and as the sense of anxiety and fragmentation that is the modern condition—in the novel's world and our own—escalates, the number of ‘typos’—missing words, punctuation, etc, also increase, so they seem to be functioning as orthographic echoes of what is happening to the novel’s characters andtheir our world—just one more example of everything falling apart. and maybe it's a coincidence or a copyeditor rushing through the end, but it feels intentional, particularly since there's an earlier line*, They say when you're lonely you start to lose words... if i’m wrong, oh well, and you can blame NYU's undergrad english program for conditioning me to look too hard at shit all those years ago. and to think it is acceptable to drop douchey phrases like “orthographic echoes” into a review. and now i have gone on a tangent just because i didn't want anyone to think that missing word was because of my own carelessness. doubledouche.
douchiness aside, i wouldn’t ordinarily read into this situation, but this is a book that knows just what it’s doing; it’s deceptively slight, with short, scattershot paragraphs telling a story but also working double-time with tonal subtext (is that a thing?)(and if it is, is it douchey?), building emotional atmosphere in scenes that seem innocently everyday on the surface, but low-level ominous when viewed as a whole.
i mean, it's not foreshadowing, this isn't chekhov's gum gag or anything, but many of the book's short paragraphs could stand alone as prose poems, building emotional weight, meaning more than their simplicity appears, hindsight and subtext and yadda, oh my.
i’d heard wonderful things about this author, but had never read her before, and when my back said "no" about getting out of bed last week**, i figured this would be a good opportunity to check her out; a one-sittinglying book about a lapsed-academic turned librarian responding to the questions of inhabitants of a world on the precipice of disaster, and trying to hold it all together whilst her personal life also unravels.
and it is gooooood.
the end.
May You Be Among the Survivors.
* which i just realized is on page 169—i.e. the page before that quote, so i'm pointing the finger of textual support, BOOM!
** and before you ask—all of this handwringing about ARE THEY OR ARE THEY NOT TYPOS??? was before i gobbled the pain pills.
**
a wonderful single-sitting book to read when a busted back keeps you abed.
review to come.
Can I ask you something, Will says one night and I sure, ask me something.
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a fucking librarian.”
fun fact about that line, beyond the “fuck, yeah!” of it in my heart: the verb between “I” and “sure” is missing in my ARC, so the quote is totes [sic], but i’m 2/3 convinced that the word was intentionally omitted. as the novel draws to its close (and that is on page 170 of the ARC's 201 pages), and as the sense of anxiety and fragmentation that is the modern condition—in the novel's world and our own—escalates, the number of ‘typos’—missing words, punctuation, etc, also increase, so they seem to be functioning as orthographic echoes of what is happening to the novel’s characters and
douchiness aside, i wouldn’t ordinarily read into this situation, but this is a book that knows just what it’s doing; it’s deceptively slight, with short, scattershot paragraphs telling a story but also working double-time with tonal subtext (is that a thing?)(and if it is, is it douchey?), building emotional atmosphere in scenes that seem innocently everyday on the surface, but low-level ominous when viewed as a whole.
My son comes in to show me something. It looks like a pack of gum, but it's really a trick. When you try to take a piece, a metal spring snaps down on your finger. "It hurts more than you think," he warns me.
Ow.
i mean, it's not foreshadowing, this isn't chekhov's gum gag or anything, but many of the book's short paragraphs could stand alone as prose poems, building emotional weight, meaning more than their simplicity appears, hindsight and subtext and yadda, oh my.
i’d heard wonderful things about this author, but had never read her before, and when my back said "no" about getting out of bed last week**, i figured this would be a good opportunity to check her out; a one-
and it is gooooood.
the end.
May You Be Among the Survivors.
* which i just realized is on page 169—i.e. the page before that quote, so i'm pointing the finger of textual support, BOOM!
** and before you ask—all of this handwringing about ARE THEY OR ARE THEY NOT TYPOS??? was before i gobbled the pain pills.
**
a wonderful single-sitting book to read when a busted back keeps you abed.
review to come.
February 15, 2020
And now for something completely different…
Strange little novel that had me in the palm of its hand. There’s not really a plot, but sometimes, who needs one? Plot lovers, please don’t be scared off. It’s full of insights that are accessible and fascinating, and there is a story thread, I promise.
You probably want to know, what’s the thread? The thread is Librarian Lizzie’s life as a wife, mother, professional letter writer, and helper of her brother, who is trying to stay clean. Amid all of this, we’re a fly on the wall of her head, hearing her musings. Her head goes everywhere—from thinking about normal activities in her family to bemoaning the scary shape of our planet. There are random thoughts and facts, observations on life, even a few jokes. It sort of seemed like a well-thought-out journal. Lizzie is concerned, but she doesn’t go off the deep end—that would be a whole different book. Instead, her mind is just plain lively, her thoughts irresistible.
The language is simple but the things she talks about are complex. She doesn’t go all academic on us, though, to my complete happiness. It’s a little headier than I like, but strangely I didn’t mind—probably because she isn’t hoity-toity. What she does is very skillful, yet it seems effortless.
Offill manages to infuse it all with the anxiety, frustration, and sadness surrounding big issues, like climate change and current politics. She also throws in an odd fact here and there, things you wish you’d remember if you ever get to be on Jeopardy.
Here’s a fun fact (I fact-checked this, lol, and it is indeed true):
“There is a species of moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds.”
Here’s a bit of wisdom:
“My friend who works in hospice says don’t tell dying people they won’t be around for the beach trip, apples in fall, etc. No more do that than knock a crutch out from under a person with a broken leg.”
And here is some hilarity:
“…the government has restrictions about what you can name your kid. Sex Fruit and Fat Boy are forbidden. Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter are okay...I’m going to name the baby Fat Sex Bus, he tells me.”
I’ve been meaning to read an earlier book by Offill, , which has lots of positive reviews. I didn’t rush to read it, though, because it sounded like it was just a bunch of snippets. I figured it would an author who spit out philosophies and gazed at belly buttons—no thanks. I usually don’t like reality snippets mixed up in my make-believe. Now, I’ve moved this one way up in my queue. If it’s anything like Weather, I’ll be in pig heaven.
I just loved this book to death. If she writes another book (man, I hope she does), I’ll be the first in line. My only complaint is that the book is so short. Fast readers can probably even read this one in one sitting.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy.
Strange little novel that had me in the palm of its hand. There’s not really a plot, but sometimes, who needs one? Plot lovers, please don’t be scared off. It’s full of insights that are accessible and fascinating, and there is a story thread, I promise.
You probably want to know, what’s the thread? The thread is Librarian Lizzie’s life as a wife, mother, professional letter writer, and helper of her brother, who is trying to stay clean. Amid all of this, we’re a fly on the wall of her head, hearing her musings. Her head goes everywhere—from thinking about normal activities in her family to bemoaning the scary shape of our planet. There are random thoughts and facts, observations on life, even a few jokes. It sort of seemed like a well-thought-out journal. Lizzie is concerned, but she doesn’t go off the deep end—that would be a whole different book. Instead, her mind is just plain lively, her thoughts irresistible.
The language is simple but the things she talks about are complex. She doesn’t go all academic on us, though, to my complete happiness. It’s a little headier than I like, but strangely I didn’t mind—probably because she isn’t hoity-toity. What she does is very skillful, yet it seems effortless.
Offill manages to infuse it all with the anxiety, frustration, and sadness surrounding big issues, like climate change and current politics. She also throws in an odd fact here and there, things you wish you’d remember if you ever get to be on Jeopardy.
Here’s a fun fact (I fact-checked this, lol, and it is indeed true):
“There is a species of moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds.”
Here’s a bit of wisdom:
“My friend who works in hospice says don’t tell dying people they won’t be around for the beach trip, apples in fall, etc. No more do that than knock a crutch out from under a person with a broken leg.”
And here is some hilarity:
“…the government has restrictions about what you can name your kid. Sex Fruit and Fat Boy are forbidden. Violence and Number 16 Bus Shelter are okay...I’m going to name the baby Fat Sex Bus, he tells me.”
I’ve been meaning to read an earlier book by Offill, , which has lots of positive reviews. I didn’t rush to read it, though, because it sounded like it was just a bunch of snippets. I figured it would an author who spit out philosophies and gazed at belly buttons—no thanks. I usually don’t like reality snippets mixed up in my make-believe. Now, I’ve moved this one way up in my queue. If it’s anything like Weather, I’ll be in pig heaven.
I just loved this book to death. If she writes another book (man, I hope she does), I’ll be the first in line. My only complaint is that the book is so short. Fast readers can probably even read this one in one sitting.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Edelweiss for the advance copy.
February 20, 2020
Loved it!!!
Audiobook/ sync... with the physical book.
The audio-narration is read by Cassandra Campbell....( a well known pro in the audiobook-world).
This is not an easy book to review....
My guess is that readers will either appreciate and enjoy it....
Or....
They won’t.
I enjoyed “Dept. of Speculation”....so I had a pretty good idea of what I might be getting into — “Unconventional Unique beauty”....
This book exceeded my expectations. I liked it even more!
It really ‘is’ like poetry .... and/ or perhaps one might say it’s similar to short stories - or stream-of consciousness - writing.
How many FAKE SHRINKS do you know? Come on....you must be able to think of at least one of your friends who earns the title...right?/!
Or.... maybe ‘you’re’ the best well known fake shrink you know—-in that case: good for you!
Lizzie Benson is the fake shrink librarian you’ll meet in “Weather”.
You’ll meet Lizzie’s brother, sister-in-law, husband, child, and a podcast star.
As to what this book is about .... well, on any given day, or hour, my answer might change.
Sorry folks....it’s a book to be experienced. I think it’s easier to discuss with others who have already read it....( analyze some of the sentences for fun)...rather than try to explain this book in a review.
Instead .....here are a few teaser sentences, ( not exactly perfectly quoted, but ‘close’), and in no chronological order ——to ‘anything’.
....”Maybe I can stop having that dream now…the one where my brother shows up and says, ‘I can die now’”.
....”I hate weddings because I cry and drink too much… But this time I got lucky, Catherine got pregnant and they had a wedding at City Hall”.
....A woman in her 40s was told by a doctor that she needed to improve her health. He said that she should go jogging 2 miles every day. Two weeks later she went back to see the doctor. He asked how she was doing. She said she was doing pretty well, except she was 28 miles from home.
.... “People call our neighborhood ‘Little Pakistan’... but not the people who live here”.
....”Nothing lasts forever… But an exception is made for the earth and sky”
....It’s Monopoly day”
....”Lately I observe that I dress like the kids on campus for maybe they dress like me”.
....”Breathing in....and breathing out.... I know I cannot escape old age. I know that I am of the nature of getting sick, I know that I am at the nature to die, breathing out, I know that I cannot escape dying.
“Weather” is about many things...life, marriage, parenthood, family, friendship, aging, climate change, fears, hope, and acceptance.
It’s tragic and sad at times, humorous, and thought-provoking ....
Mostly ....I think it’s beautifully real!
I’m started to have a girl crush on Jenny Offill
Audiobook/ sync... with the physical book.
The audio-narration is read by Cassandra Campbell....( a well known pro in the audiobook-world).
This is not an easy book to review....
My guess is that readers will either appreciate and enjoy it....
Or....
They won’t.
I enjoyed “Dept. of Speculation”....so I had a pretty good idea of what I might be getting into — “Unconventional Unique beauty”....
This book exceeded my expectations. I liked it even more!
It really ‘is’ like poetry .... and/ or perhaps one might say it’s similar to short stories - or stream-of consciousness - writing.
How many FAKE SHRINKS do you know? Come on....you must be able to think of at least one of your friends who earns the title...right?/!
Or.... maybe ‘you’re’ the best well known fake shrink you know—-in that case: good for you!
Lizzie Benson is the fake shrink librarian you’ll meet in “Weather”.
You’ll meet Lizzie’s brother, sister-in-law, husband, child, and a podcast star.
As to what this book is about .... well, on any given day, or hour, my answer might change.
Sorry folks....it’s a book to be experienced. I think it’s easier to discuss with others who have already read it....( analyze some of the sentences for fun)...rather than try to explain this book in a review.
Instead .....here are a few teaser sentences, ( not exactly perfectly quoted, but ‘close’), and in no chronological order ——to ‘anything’.
....”Maybe I can stop having that dream now…the one where my brother shows up and says, ‘I can die now’”.
....”I hate weddings because I cry and drink too much… But this time I got lucky, Catherine got pregnant and they had a wedding at City Hall”.
....A woman in her 40s was told by a doctor that she needed to improve her health. He said that she should go jogging 2 miles every day. Two weeks later she went back to see the doctor. He asked how she was doing. She said she was doing pretty well, except she was 28 miles from home.
.... “People call our neighborhood ‘Little Pakistan’... but not the people who live here”.
....”Nothing lasts forever… But an exception is made for the earth and sky”
....It’s Monopoly day”
....”Lately I observe that I dress like the kids on campus for maybe they dress like me”.
....”Breathing in....and breathing out.... I know I cannot escape old age. I know that I am of the nature of getting sick, I know that I am at the nature to die, breathing out, I know that I cannot escape dying.
“Weather” is about many things...life, marriage, parenthood, family, friendship, aging, climate change, fears, hope, and acceptance.
It’s tragic and sad at times, humorous, and thought-provoking ....
Mostly ....I think it’s beautifully real!
I’m started to have a girl crush on Jenny Offill
February 23, 2020
I stayed up past midnight to finish, exhilarated by the prose, and excited about every exquisite perfect detail, and eager for the perceptions and the recognitions that came tumbling along on every page...and now I'm done, and I just don't know. I don't think I'm going to remember this in a year. The tiny paragraphs of insight, one after another, remind me a little too much of Twitter. "Good Twitter," but still.
Reading this novel was like watching a gentle rain falling on a pond.
Reading this novel was like watching a gentle rain falling on a pond.
March 24, 2020
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a fucking librarian.”
Hell yeh! How could I not love a book with those words!
Weather is an enjoyable and quick read, perfect for when you find it hard to concentrate. I know many of us are finding it difficult to get into books at the moment. I don't know how many books I've begun and set aside this past week. From page one of this book however, I was able to concentrate almost 100%. It reads sort of like a journal because our protagonist is sharing her thoughts as she goes about her days. There are a lot of fun facts included -- she's a librarian so of course she knows everything! Actually, I do want to point out though.... Lizzy informs us that for a toothache, you can crush aspirin and place it on the tooth. Nope, please don't do that! Librarians might know a lot but we don't know everything.
Last week, I had a very deep filling fall out and the tooth is hurting some. Even if my dentist was still seeing patients, there's no way in hell I'll go right now. Therefore, I was thrilled to come across this tidbit in the book. Thankfully the librarian in me has to validate everything, check the best sources. Aspirin will burn your gums so please don't listen to Lizzy on this one!
Weather is quirky and witty even if not laugh-out-loud funny. I enjoyed reading about the different characters who enter Lizzy's life, either in her personal life or through her job at the library. There was one laugh-out-loud moment for me about "an elderly gentleman who keeps asking me to give him the password for his own email? I try to explain that it is not possible for me to know."
Yup, that happens. People think we know everything, including their passwords! More than once I've had patrons get angry at me because I didn't know their passwords. I had someone scream at me: Why the hell don't you know, you're a librarian!? And then proceed to argue with me that he knew I knew the password but was just refusing to tell it to him because I didn't want him to be able to check his email. One woman drove me insane for a week because she forgot her Facebook password every day. Every day I would help her re-set it and asked her to write it down so she would remember. Every day she lost the paper. I finally asked if she would like me to keep the password for her and she wanted to know why I wanted to get into her Facebook, did I want to spy on her?! (She had some paranoia problems.) After that, she gave up on Facebook because she knew the government was hacking into it anyway.
I can identify with Lizzy in her almost obsession for planning ahead. For instance, she's terrified about climate change and can't stop thinking about how she can protect her family from the worst of it. Should they up and move to southern Argentina ahead of the crowds?
I think Lizzy feels a bit out of control over events in her life and so she obsesses about planning ahead, something I can relate to. Something perhaps most of us can relate to. When there is much uncertainty, we feel a lack of control and our brains go into overtime trying to find a way to get in control of the situation. Sometimes though, we just have to accept that there are things beyond our control. We can't save everyone. We can't plan for every contingency. That is frustrating and frightening, especially for those of us who are control freaks. However, accepting our limitations can bring about a calmer state of mind and thus a healthier state of being.
I'm glad I read this book now instead of pre-pandemic times (is it just me or does it seem like that was years instead of months ago?!). It reminded me to take a breath and let go of trying to change the things I cannot change.
Perhaps that makes it sound like a heavy read, but it is not. It's light and fun and easy to get pulled into. There's not much of a plot but that was OK. I wavered between 4 and 5 stars; it's more of 4.5 but I'll bump it up.
“I’m a fucking librarian.”
Hell yeh! How could I not love a book with those words!
Weather is an enjoyable and quick read, perfect for when you find it hard to concentrate. I know many of us are finding it difficult to get into books at the moment. I don't know how many books I've begun and set aside this past week. From page one of this book however, I was able to concentrate almost 100%. It reads sort of like a journal because our protagonist is sharing her thoughts as she goes about her days. There are a lot of fun facts included -- she's a librarian so of course she knows everything! Actually, I do want to point out though.... Lizzy informs us that for a toothache, you can crush aspirin and place it on the tooth. Nope, please don't do that! Librarians might know a lot but we don't know everything.
Last week, I had a very deep filling fall out and the tooth is hurting some. Even if my dentist was still seeing patients, there's no way in hell I'll go right now. Therefore, I was thrilled to come across this tidbit in the book. Thankfully the librarian in me has to validate everything, check the best sources. Aspirin will burn your gums so please don't listen to Lizzy on this one!
Weather is quirky and witty even if not laugh-out-loud funny. I enjoyed reading about the different characters who enter Lizzy's life, either in her personal life or through her job at the library. There was one laugh-out-loud moment for me about "an elderly gentleman who keeps asking me to give him the password for his own email? I try to explain that it is not possible for me to know."
Yup, that happens. People think we know everything, including their passwords! More than once I've had patrons get angry at me because I didn't know their passwords. I had someone scream at me: Why the hell don't you know, you're a librarian!? And then proceed to argue with me that he knew I knew the password but was just refusing to tell it to him because I didn't want him to be able to check his email. One woman drove me insane for a week because she forgot her Facebook password every day. Every day I would help her re-set it and asked her to write it down so she would remember. Every day she lost the paper. I finally asked if she would like me to keep the password for her and she wanted to know why I wanted to get into her Facebook, did I want to spy on her?! (She had some paranoia problems.) After that, she gave up on Facebook because she knew the government was hacking into it anyway.
I can identify with Lizzy in her almost obsession for planning ahead. For instance, she's terrified about climate change and can't stop thinking about how she can protect her family from the worst of it. Should they up and move to southern Argentina ahead of the crowds?
I think Lizzy feels a bit out of control over events in her life and so she obsesses about planning ahead, something I can relate to. Something perhaps most of us can relate to. When there is much uncertainty, we feel a lack of control and our brains go into overtime trying to find a way to get in control of the situation. Sometimes though, we just have to accept that there are things beyond our control. We can't save everyone. We can't plan for every contingency. That is frustrating and frightening, especially for those of us who are control freaks. However, accepting our limitations can bring about a calmer state of mind and thus a healthier state of being.
I'm glad I read this book now instead of pre-pandemic times (is it just me or does it seem like that was years instead of months ago?!). It reminded me to take a breath and let go of trying to change the things I cannot change.
Perhaps that makes it sound like a heavy read, but it is not. It's light and fun and easy to get pulled into. There's not much of a plot but that was OK. I wavered between 4 and 5 stars; it's more of 4.5 but I'll bump it up.
June 29, 2023
I loved the narrator but found some of the other characters hard to keep up with. Specially as who they were and their role/job etc wasn’t always explicitly named. Maybe if it was read in one sitting then I wouldn’t have had this problem so much.
I found it both witty and thought provoking and would recommend you give it a read.
Offill turns everyday life into poetry
I found it both witty and thought provoking and would recommend you give it a read.
Offill turns everyday life into poetry
April 21, 2022
Now shortlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize.
I joined a Radio 4 Book Club virtual discussion of Jenny Offill’s 2014 second novel “Dept of Speculation” (shortlisted for the Folio Prize); and, this, her third novel “Weather” appeared on a number of 2020-preview lists.
This book is very much in the style of Dept. of Speculation – which I described in my review of that book as an elliptical and aphoristic style.
Offil said in many interviews around Dept. of Speculation that she enjoys wandering the non-fiction aisles of university libraries, pulling books and random, and noting any facts which catch her interest and she can use in her books.
Here she embraces that idea by making her main character a University librarian.
Lizzie gets a side job supporting her ex research supervisor - a climate change podcaster Sylvia. She accompanies her to summits and meetings, meeting the super-rich and their response to the climate emergency, a world of rewilding, technological singularity, transhumanism, floating cities, geo-engineering. She also answers her emails and post, which in turn introduces her to a different approach to the same topic – the world of survival hacks, doomsteads, doomsday preppers.
Lizzie’s marriage falters a little – due to her excessive involvement (at one stage she takes an “enmeshment” test) with the life of her addict brother, which takes a more dramatic turn as he struggles with being a new-father. Her insistence on taking on the burden of her brother, is I think reflected in her views on climate change – taking on the burdens of the human race.
And climate change, in keeping with the book’s style is addressed elliptically and aphoristically, some examples:
Of the anthropological driver of climate change:
Of her own attempts to process the emergency:
Of the difficulty of understanding the time frame over which climate change is emerging:
It seems almost impossible to review this book – without comparing and contrasting it to Lucy Ellmans’s Goldsmith Prize winning, Booker shortlisted “Ducks, Newburyport”.
Both feature an American female wife and mother as a narrator, both focus almost obsessively on environmental issues, on the election of Trump and what the two together say about modern America, both obsessed that this is the worst-of-times (in direct contradiction to almost every possible statistical measure that can be used), both mix the profound with the mundane, both interleave trivia with domesticity and with world events.
However whereas Ellmann has a comprehensive, all-inclusive, stream-of-consciousness style, representing the narrator’s though process, with nothing edited or filtered; by contrast Offill’s style is all about the filter and edit – it is a book which has been edited down to almost nothing, where much of the action takes place in the spaces between paragraphs.
I am not clear which book I enjoyed the most. This is a much easier and more intellectually stimulating read, but also a more ephemeral and insubstantial one.
Why only four stars. My disconnect with this book, as with Ducks, Newburyport ultimately I think comes down to the narrator’s (and I assume author’s) worldview, which in its despair lacks a faith in the future that I feel. In “Weather” in particular this is captured in a dismissal of a profound challenge (which in the appendix is correctly assigned to John Piper) with a curt “Yup”. And that unfortunately is a “Nope” to a fifth star.
My thanks to Granta Publications for an ARC via NetGalley.
I joined a Radio 4 Book Club virtual discussion of Jenny Offill’s 2014 second novel “Dept of Speculation” (shortlisted for the Folio Prize); and, this, her third novel “Weather” appeared on a number of 2020-preview lists.
This book is very much in the style of Dept. of Speculation – which I described in my review of that book as an elliptical and aphoristic style.
Offil said in many interviews around Dept. of Speculation that she enjoys wandering the non-fiction aisles of university libraries, pulling books and random, and noting any facts which catch her interest and she can use in her books.
Here she embraces that idea by making her main character a University librarian.
Lizzie gets a side job supporting her ex research supervisor - a climate change podcaster Sylvia. She accompanies her to summits and meetings, meeting the super-rich and their response to the climate emergency, a world of rewilding, technological singularity, transhumanism, floating cities, geo-engineering. She also answers her emails and post, which in turn introduces her to a different approach to the same topic – the world of survival hacks, doomsteads, doomsday preppers.
Lizzie’s marriage falters a little – due to her excessive involvement (at one stage she takes an “enmeshment” test) with the life of her addict brother, which takes a more dramatic turn as he struggles with being a new-father. Her insistence on taking on the burden of her brother, is I think reflected in her views on climate change – taking on the burdens of the human race.
“I let my brother choose the movie for once, but then it’s so stupid I can barely watch it. In the movies he likes there is always some great disaster about to happen and only one unlikely person who can stop it.”
And climate change, in keeping with the book’s style is addressed elliptically and aphoristically, some examples:
First they came for the coral, but I did not say anything because I was not coral
It is important to be on the alert for “the decisive moment,” says the man next to me who is talking to his date. I agree. The only difference is that he is talking about twentieth-century photography and I am talking about twenty-first-century everything.
My question for Will is: Does this feel like a country at peace or at war? I’m joking, sort of, but he answers seriously. He says it feels the way it does just before it starts. My question for Will is: Does this feel like a country at peace or at war? I’m joking, sort of, but he answers seriously. He says it feels the way it does just before it starts. It’s a weird thing, but you learn to pick up on it. Even while everybody’s convincing themselves it’s going to be okay
Of the anthropological driver of climate change:
Sometimes I bring her books to read. She likes mysteries, she told me. Regular-type mysteries. But this last one I gave her was no good, she says. It was all jumbled up. In it, the detective investigated the crime, tracked down every clue, interviewed every possible suspect, only to discover that he himself was the murderer. You don’t say.
Of her own attempts to process the emergency:
The disaster psychologist explains that in times of emergency the brain can get stuck on a loop, trying to find a similar situation for comparison.
Of the difficulty of understanding the time frame over which climate change is emerging:
A turtle was mugged by a gang of snails. The police came to take a report, but (the turtle) couldn’t help them. ‘It all happened so fast,’ he said.”
It seems almost impossible to review this book – without comparing and contrasting it to Lucy Ellmans’s Goldsmith Prize winning, Booker shortlisted “Ducks, Newburyport”.
Both feature an American female wife and mother as a narrator, both focus almost obsessively on environmental issues, on the election of Trump and what the two together say about modern America, both obsessed that this is the worst-of-times (in direct contradiction to almost every possible statistical measure that can be used), both mix the profound with the mundane, both interleave trivia with domesticity and with world events.
However whereas Ellmann has a comprehensive, all-inclusive, stream-of-consciousness style, representing the narrator’s though process, with nothing edited or filtered; by contrast Offill’s style is all about the filter and edit – it is a book which has been edited down to almost nothing, where much of the action takes place in the spaces between paragraphs.
I am not clear which book I enjoyed the most. This is a much easier and more intellectually stimulating read, but also a more ephemeral and insubstantial one.
Why only four stars. My disconnect with this book, as with Ducks, Newburyport ultimately I think comes down to the narrator’s (and I assume author’s) worldview, which in its despair lacks a faith in the future that I feel. In “Weather” in particular this is captured in a dismissal of a profound challenge (which in the appendix is correctly assigned to John Piper) with a curt “Yup”. And that unfortunately is a “Nope” to a fifth star.
My thanks to Granta Publications for an ARC via NetGalley.
March 3, 2020
Now Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020
Jenny Offill describes what it feels like to live in today's America, she writes about the political and social weather, the charged atmosphere that has enveloped the nation. Her protagonist Lizzie Benson works as a librarian without a traditional degree, thus administrating knowledge without being formally qualified - but, in the metaphorical sense, who really is? In the age of fragmented filter bubbles and the rise of hate, Lizzie also navigates her roles as wife and mother while trying to help her brother, a recovering addict with the need for overwhelming emotional support. And then her old academic mentor Sylvia Liller hires her to answer her fan mail, written by various listeners of her podcast "Hell and High Water" about the state of affairs.
Lizzie tries to keep up with the demands, tries to come to terms with the world around her, all the impressions, emotions and events that exhaust her powers. She aims to fulfill everybody's needs, has supported her ailing mother, dropped out of graduate school to save her brother, now wants to be a loving wife to her game designer husband and mother to her smart little boy, she wants to help keep her brother clean, plus she is eager to do a good job at the library and answering the mail for Sylvia - the messages that arrive add additional voices of fear, doom and anger that intrude Lizzie's thoughts. Then there is a range of minor characters, from enigmatic car service owner Mr. Jimmy to the clients at the library, for whom Lizzie feels different kinds of responsibility.
This is a well-constructed book full of witty and often funny descriptions that aim to illustrate the emotional and psychological toll our time takes, both for the individual and for families. Of course, the title also refers to climate change, an issue that troubles Lizzie. Still, I didn't really warm to this text. This might come down to personal taste - the novel is certainly clever, but I didn't find it particularly gripping and had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the text as I wasn't immersed in the writing, partly because the story itself takes a backseat and the atmosphere, the title-giving weather, is the real star. All in all, this is a very intelligent and clever book, but it didn't fully win me over.
Jenny Offill describes what it feels like to live in today's America, she writes about the political and social weather, the charged atmosphere that has enveloped the nation. Her protagonist Lizzie Benson works as a librarian without a traditional degree, thus administrating knowledge without being formally qualified - but, in the metaphorical sense, who really is? In the age of fragmented filter bubbles and the rise of hate, Lizzie also navigates her roles as wife and mother while trying to help her brother, a recovering addict with the need for overwhelming emotional support. And then her old academic mentor Sylvia Liller hires her to answer her fan mail, written by various listeners of her podcast "Hell and High Water" about the state of affairs.
Lizzie tries to keep up with the demands, tries to come to terms with the world around her, all the impressions, emotions and events that exhaust her powers. She aims to fulfill everybody's needs, has supported her ailing mother, dropped out of graduate school to save her brother, now wants to be a loving wife to her game designer husband and mother to her smart little boy, she wants to help keep her brother clean, plus she is eager to do a good job at the library and answering the mail for Sylvia - the messages that arrive add additional voices of fear, doom and anger that intrude Lizzie's thoughts. Then there is a range of minor characters, from enigmatic car service owner Mr. Jimmy to the clients at the library, for whom Lizzie feels different kinds of responsibility.
This is a well-constructed book full of witty and often funny descriptions that aim to illustrate the emotional and psychological toll our time takes, both for the individual and for families. Of course, the title also refers to climate change, an issue that troubles Lizzie. Still, I didn't really warm to this text. This might come down to personal taste - the novel is certainly clever, but I didn't find it particularly gripping and had to make a conscious effort to concentrate on the text as I wasn't immersed in the writing, partly because the story itself takes a backseat and the atmosphere, the title-giving weather, is the real star. All in all, this is a very intelligent and clever book, but it didn't fully win me over.
March 2, 2020
I first feel compelled to clear up some confusion on the part of the main character about academic librarians. As someone who has supervised students in an academic library, I have at times heard them refer to themselves as "librarians" but always correct them. Librarians do require a degree (MC does not have one) and do not spend their days checking out books, shelving books, or ordering random books based on whim. Many times, academic librarians are faculty members with the additional responsibilities faculty members hold, such as publishing/research, advising, and committee work in addition to whatever role they play in the library. I can understand if the character thinks she is a librarian but that's the work of our very hardworking staff. The only days I did work like that as a librarian were to cover student assistant illness or because I needed a break.
I really want this book to work for me. After I read her last one, which I found forgettable, I would hear women slightly younger than me glow on about it on podcasts, best read of the last decade, etc. It just didn't have that impact on me. I was looking forward to this one because of the librarian aspect but it turns out - not actually a librarian. And yes this is the hill I will die on.
The book is short and fragmented and the basic parts of the story that keep coming back around are the MC and her spouse, and an actual longterm relationship without a lot of drama, except for that caused by MC's need to play codependent with her addict brother who can't hang on to jobs, relationships, or sobriety. MC worries a lot and also does mailing and clerical work for a woman who is like a prophet of climate change, which is where the weather element comes through I suppose. Accurate depiction of SAHM culture and 21st century school culture, and too much technology running the show.
I just don't think it had a great impact on me as a reader and will be hard to recall at any detail later. I really want to like this! So frustrating.
I really want this book to work for me. After I read her last one, which I found forgettable, I would hear women slightly younger than me glow on about it on podcasts, best read of the last decade, etc. It just didn't have that impact on me. I was looking forward to this one because of the librarian aspect but it turns out - not actually a librarian. And yes this is the hill I will die on.
The book is short and fragmented and the basic parts of the story that keep coming back around are the MC and her spouse, and an actual longterm relationship without a lot of drama, except for that caused by MC's need to play codependent with her addict brother who can't hang on to jobs, relationships, or sobriety. MC worries a lot and also does mailing and clerical work for a woman who is like a prophet of climate change, which is where the weather element comes through I suppose. Accurate depiction of SAHM culture and 21st century school culture, and too much technology running the show.
I just don't think it had a great impact on me as a reader and will be hard to recall at any detail later. I really want to like this! So frustrating.
January 5, 2020
4 stars — so close to 5/stars!
There’s something that seriously clicks between me and Jennifer Offill’s writing. I loved The Dept. of Speculation and, again, loved Weather. This is a very short novel, told through a series of first person vignettes. The narrator is a librarian, living in New York with her husband and young son, and eventually her addict brother. Each paragraph is a quick impressionistic reflection on the library’s patrons, parenthood, the state of her marriage, her “enmeshment” with her brother, climate change and the state of the world — with an occasional joke thrown in. This won’t be for everyone. It isn’t a story. But I loved it. I love Offil’s honesty and sensibility. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
There’s something that seriously clicks between me and Jennifer Offill’s writing. I loved The Dept. of Speculation and, again, loved Weather. This is a very short novel, told through a series of first person vignettes. The narrator is a librarian, living in New York with her husband and young son, and eventually her addict brother. Each paragraph is a quick impressionistic reflection on the library’s patrons, parenthood, the state of her marriage, her “enmeshment” with her brother, climate change and the state of the world — with an occasional joke thrown in. This won’t be for everyone. It isn’t a story. But I loved it. I love Offil’s honesty and sensibility. Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.
October 25, 2020
Rather pedestrian observations about our current time.
Weather did not hit me emotionally and felt as transient a reading experience as it's namesake
This woman is a shrink. Also a Buddhist. She likes to practice on or the other on me, I’ve noticed.
In we are thrown into the stream of conscience of Lizzie, the very observant librarian of our age. She lives in New York with her husband Ben and her son Eli. They are Jewish, but more relevant to the story is the close relation Lizzie has with her brother Henry, who is revealed to have a history with drugs.
Also she ends up (apparently her work is not very taxing or engaging) as the personal assistant of a climate activist podcaster, upping her anxiety levels with amongst others all the attention she draws to doomsday prepping.
Furthermore observations about being a modern day parent, a ethical consumer (with Lizzie even ending up supporting a local subpar car service), some minor physical ailments and of course how it feels to a liberal that Trump is elected, come back.
I feel if you'd send this book back in time 25 years it would be seen as bold, visionary, and smartly extrapolating trends then only just apparent. But for 2020 me her ultrashort paragraphs felt ephemeral, like scrolling through a twitter feed, with the same level of emotional engagement.
I even became a bit restless from Lizzie her voice and her thoughts about doomsday prepping, that is something I need to credit the author for. Not to say that her commentary on hipsters and tiger moms are not at times funny, but I think this has been done before, and more scathingly as well.
Overall, besides some razor sharp observations on being a mother (Why didn’t I have more kids so I could have more chances?) and especially:
A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person.
I just felt something lacking in this novella.
I think I needed a bit more sense of space and “padding” of scenes for lack of a better word.
Weather is sometimes so sparse I have no idea where the main character was or from where her musings come from.
Maybe this style is a nod to are current ultrashort, social media influenced attention spans, but for me this didn't work well and I just end up thinking that Lizzie should think about her span of control (like read some ) and that she could actually benefit from some meditation or mindfulness.
Weather did not hit me emotionally and felt as transient a reading experience as it's namesake
This woman is a shrink. Also a Buddhist. She likes to practice on or the other on me, I’ve noticed.
In we are thrown into the stream of conscience of Lizzie, the very observant librarian of our age. She lives in New York with her husband Ben and her son Eli. They are Jewish, but more relevant to the story is the close relation Lizzie has with her brother Henry, who is revealed to have a history with drugs.
Also she ends up (apparently her work is not very taxing or engaging) as the personal assistant of a climate activist podcaster, upping her anxiety levels with amongst others all the attention she draws to doomsday prepping.
Furthermore observations about being a modern day parent, a ethical consumer (with Lizzie even ending up supporting a local subpar car service), some minor physical ailments and of course how it feels to a liberal that Trump is elected, come back.
I feel if you'd send this book back in time 25 years it would be seen as bold, visionary, and smartly extrapolating trends then only just apparent. But for 2020 me her ultrashort paragraphs felt ephemeral, like scrolling through a twitter feed, with the same level of emotional engagement.
I even became a bit restless from Lizzie her voice and her thoughts about doomsday prepping, that is something I need to credit the author for. Not to say that her commentary on hipsters and tiger moms are not at times funny, but I think this has been done before, and more scathingly as well.
Overall, besides some razor sharp observations on being a mother (Why didn’t I have more kids so I could have more chances?) and especially:
A few days later, I yelled at him for losing his new lunch box, and he turned to me and said, Are you sure you’re my mother? Sometimes you don’t seem like a good enough person.
I just felt something lacking in this novella.
I think I needed a bit more sense of space and “padding” of scenes for lack of a better word.
Weather is sometimes so sparse I have no idea where the main character was or from where her musings come from.
Maybe this style is a nod to are current ultrashort, social media influenced attention spans, but for me this didn't work well and I just end up thinking that Lizzie should think about her span of control (like read some ) and that she could actually benefit from some meditation or mindfulness.
Read
September 15, 2020Sometimes a book meets you exactly where you are, and Weather did that for me. My anxiety about climate change is now a constant hum in the background of my life. I think things like, “Why do I bother to cash checks or go to the dentist or consider switching from Honey Nut Cheerios to regular Cheerios—the world is literally on fire. You should be making an escape plan, not watching Netflix.” Offill’s humor really worked for me too, which I know is one of the most personal comments you can make about a book.
I was also pleasantly surprised by how much this felt like a novel, instead of a series of vaguely connected thoughts. There are plenty of authors working in the vein of Jenny Offill who don’t manage the same. (Her books do seem like tacit permission to MFA students to ignore their inability to plot—please practice plotting, MFA students! Great skill to have!)
I could see this being a book I think about every day. Equally, I could see it being one I don’t think about again until someone specifically brings it up. One of those extreme “time will tell” situations when it comes to final impact. But if you feel mildly insane by the juxtaposition of your daily life with larger world events, this novel will speak to you.
I was also pleasantly surprised by how much this felt like a novel, instead of a series of vaguely connected thoughts. There are plenty of authors working in the vein of Jenny Offill who don’t manage the same. (Her books do seem like tacit permission to MFA students to ignore their inability to plot—please practice plotting, MFA students! Great skill to have!)
I could see this being a book I think about every day. Equally, I could see it being one I don’t think about again until someone specifically brings it up. One of those extreme “time will tell” situations when it comes to final impact. But if you feel mildly insane by the juxtaposition of your daily life with larger world events, this novel will speak to you.
May 10, 2020
I guess 1-star is going to seem mean spirited, however if 2-stars is defined as "it was ok" then I find myself thinking, well no, this was not "ok". Things started out hopefully enough, there are some funny little snippets here and there, but then either the text unravelled or my patience did.
At the moment I need books that say something tangible and preferably factual, so it is not the authors fault that I picked the wrong type of book for my mood.
Objectively, this is good as evidenced by the many great reviews here, but it left me cold and bewildered and running back into the arms of non-fiction ;)
At the moment I need books that say something tangible and preferably factual, so it is not the authors fault that I picked the wrong type of book for my mood.
Objectively, this is good as evidenced by the many great reviews here, but it left me cold and bewildered and running back into the arms of non-fiction ;)
September 25, 2020
One of those books for me that I wanted to end to put me out of my misery. There are 5 parts to this novel and for the life of me I don’t see the decision point as to where one part ended and another one began. The book was a bunch of short paragraphs. Lizzie is the narrator and the book is about her and her husband Ben and their son Eli who is in elementary grade school. Then there is Lizzie’s brother Henry who falls in and out of sobriety and a woman he marries Catherine (why she would marry him I have no idea), and they have a baby. I would imagine you can get the plot from the synopsis. Sure was not much a plot IMHO. I know the time period was circa 2016 because Election Night 2016 was replayed again as if I needed to be reminded of it (given that we are approaching Election Night 2020). There was also a theme of survivalist training because some people in the book were convinced the end of the world as we know it was nigh due to climate change.
One comment I made in my notes more than once was that there were a lot of interesting factoids in the book. But lots of interesting factoids scattered throughout the book does not a good book make (necessarily).
I did like her last novel, Department of Speculation. I gave that a B+ before I joined 카지노싸이트 and adopted this rating system.
Reviews (looks to me like most reviewers like it…)
‧ Somebody at NPR liked it:
‧
‧
‧
‧
One comment I made in my notes more than once was that there were a lot of interesting factoids in the book. But lots of interesting factoids scattered throughout the book does not a good book make (necessarily).
I did like her last novel, Department of Speculation. I gave that a B+ before I joined 카지노싸이트 and adopted this rating system.
Reviews (looks to me like most reviewers like it…)
‧ Somebody at NPR liked it:
‧
‧
‧
‧
March 8, 2020
This is a very specific kind of navel-gazy book that works really well for me but might prove frustrating or even kind of empty for other readers. This is the kind of novel Sarah Manguso would write and I loved it.
The blurb makes this sound like a plot heavy book but it is very much the opposite. Offill has edited her book down to sparse scenes, short musings, and witty sentences. Much of the action happens off-page and only the ramifications are felt. I thought the easily readable prose actually hides how very thought-provoking this book is, and the brief scenes hide the emotional leg work she does with them. I found the sibling relationship at the heart of the novel impeccably drawn and highly emotional. People have talked about the anxiety-inducing spiral with regards to climate change the narrator is involved in, but I actually found the commentary on post partum depression a lot more difficult to read, for obvious reasons I guess. I thought the narrator’s voice imparted so much warmth towards her brother that I felt her helplessness in this situation acutely.
Content warning: Climate change, (emotional) cheating, post partum depression
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on
The blurb makes this sound like a plot heavy book but it is very much the opposite. Offill has edited her book down to sparse scenes, short musings, and witty sentences. Much of the action happens off-page and only the ramifications are felt. I thought the easily readable prose actually hides how very thought-provoking this book is, and the brief scenes hide the emotional leg work she does with them. I found the sibling relationship at the heart of the novel impeccably drawn and highly emotional. People have talked about the anxiety-inducing spiral with regards to climate change the narrator is involved in, but I actually found the commentary on post partum depression a lot more difficult to read, for obvious reasons I guess. I thought the narrator’s voice imparted so much warmth towards her brother that I felt her helplessness in this situation acutely.
Content warning: Climate change, (emotional) cheating, post partum depression
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on
April 22, 2020
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2020
I read Offill's previous novel a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it a lot. This one shares many of the same traits - a narrative largely dominated by random thoughts, some of which are interesting and perceptive, with a simple narrative arc that mostly stays in the background. Much of it is dominated by thoughts on climate change and the election of Trump, so without the humour and quirkiness it might be rather gloomy, but overall it is quite an entertaining and thought provoking read.
I read Offill's previous novel a couple of years ago, and enjoyed it a lot. This one shares many of the same traits - a narrative largely dominated by random thoughts, some of which are interesting and perceptive, with a simple narrative arc that mostly stays in the background. Much of it is dominated by thoughts on climate change and the election of Trump, so without the humour and quirkiness it might be rather gloomy, but overall it is quite an entertaining and thought provoking read.
Want to read
April 23, 2024reading literary it girls several years too late
February 13, 2020
Although I read Offill’s novel “Dept. of Speculation” over five years ago during one joyously long reading session on a plane, it stands out in my mind as so stylistically unique with a voice that seamlessly blends humour with poignant critiques on love and modern life. Her new novel “Weather” uses a similar style of narrative while engaging more overtly with current politics and social anxiety. Rather than a linear story we’re presented with clipped sections of text surrounding the life of Lizzie Benson, a librarian and mother living on the east coast of America. Brief scenes from her life are interspersed with paragraphs from journals or jokes. Together these form an impression (rather than a complete portrait) of her life and a sense of being in the time proceeding and immediately after Trump’s election. Hanging over the book is its characters’ impending sense of doom and a need to develop survival strategies for what they assume to be an inevitable disaster.
Read my full
Read my full
March 12, 2020
Author Jenny Offill’s third novel, “Weather”, isn’t for the average reader. She has written a novel that comprises mostly fleeting thoughts and moments. There isn’t much structure with the exception of time.
Our narrator is Lizzie who is married with one sweet boy. She feels responsible for her brother who is fighting depression, anxiety, and addiction. She works for a woman who has a podcast about climate change; Lizzie has the responsibility of writing responses to this woman’s fans.
What Offill does well is tell a story through the transient thoughts of one woman. I could relate. In one moment, you listen to the sweet comments of your innocent son, and the next moment you hear the anger of city life.
There is no plot summary. There is no plot really. It’s the daily slog of life; being open to hearing what’s around you. It’s the labor of keeping a marriage fresh. It’s a story of raising an innocent boy in the midst of chaos. It’s the effort involved in working and keeping your sarcasm in check.
I enjoyed it for its originality.
Our narrator is Lizzie who is married with one sweet boy. She feels responsible for her brother who is fighting depression, anxiety, and addiction. She works for a woman who has a podcast about climate change; Lizzie has the responsibility of writing responses to this woman’s fans.
What Offill does well is tell a story through the transient thoughts of one woman. I could relate. In one moment, you listen to the sweet comments of your innocent son, and the next moment you hear the anger of city life.
There is no plot summary. There is no plot really. It’s the daily slog of life; being open to hearing what’s around you. It’s the labor of keeping a marriage fresh. It’s a story of raising an innocent boy in the midst of chaos. It’s the effort involved in working and keeping your sarcasm in check.
I enjoyed it for its originality.
March 23, 2021
This book messed me up. So brilliant and so full of anxiety and dread, but, also, maybe, some hope.
September 1, 2022
3.5 stars — Instead of writing this review, I was supposed to be packing to leave on an 11-day cruise with my sister and parents, but we just found out it's been canceled due to Omicron complications. Betty White, Sidney Poitier, Joan Didion, and Bob Saget have all died and January's not even halfway over. American democracy as we know it appears to be in its death throes. So naturally, I wanted something fun and light to kick off my new reading year but of course found myself picking up this darkly funny little novel about climate catastrophe instead. Talk about peak early 2022 energy lol!
Lizzie is a white, middle-aged librarian at the same university where she dropped out of her grad program many years earlier. She takes a side gig replying to emails for Hell and High Water, a former mentor's popular podcast about how to combat and survive the rapidly accelerating threats to our planet from climate change. Soon Lizzie finds herself plunging down a rabbit hole of paranoia and dread as she researches disaster psychology, survivalism, and the various ways one can (and probably should) be "prepping" for the end of the world as we know it.
Through a fast-paced, fragmented, first-person narrative that resembles a Twitter feed or personal diary more than a conventional novel, we follow Lizzie as she strives to be a "good" wife, mother, and sister, all while grappling with her own growing gloom and rising panic about what the future will look like for her family, country, species, and planet.
I've seen this classified as "pre-apocalyptic" fiction, and that seems to me a perfect description. Its similarities, both stylistically and thematically, with Patricia Lockwood's , one of my favorite reads from last year, are striking. But where that novel focused more on social media (and Twitter in particular), Offill's contribution to this emerging new genre feels more expansive and empathic, a literary time capsule capturing more broadly how it feels to be alive at this precise, terrifying moment in time.
Even while everybody's convincing themselves it's going to be okay, it's there in the air somehow. The whole thing is more physical than mental, he tells me.
Like hackles? The way a dog's hackles go up? Yes, he says.
I inhaled this book in one night. Considering the grim subject matter, it's a shockingly fun, breezy, and dare I say even cathartic read that couldn't have come at a better time.
I think one's enjoyment of this book will hinge on how one feels about the main character and fragmented literary style. I happened to love Lizzie's dry, self-deprecating wit and sharp, observational humor. In fact, she reminded me of several of my favorite friends here on GoodReads. And reading this felt like spending the night at a cozy little dive bar with a charming new friend, discussing our rising sense of dread about an uncertain future, but also finding flashes of humor and hope through shared laughter and liquor.
After all, isn't one of reading's greatest gifts the reassurance that we aren't alone in any of this?
My only real critiques are that the idiosyncratic writing style starts to wear thin by the end, feeling increasingly fractured, disoriented, and aimless. Although perhaps that was Offill's intent? I definitely didn't do the unique format any favors by trying to scarf this down in one sitting.
I also couldn't help but notice a bit of whitewashing going on here. I realize this was published before George Floyd and the summer of 2020's Racial Reckoning, but the conspicuous absence of any sustained reflections on systemic racism, police violence, or the rise of white supremacy in a book about our collective 21st century angst and future as a society and species, felt like an incomplete picture and a missed opportunity.
Lizzie is a white, middle-aged librarian at the same university where she dropped out of her grad program many years earlier. She takes a side gig replying to emails for Hell and High Water, a former mentor's popular podcast about how to combat and survive the rapidly accelerating threats to our planet from climate change. Soon Lizzie finds herself plunging down a rabbit hole of paranoia and dread as she researches disaster psychology, survivalism, and the various ways one can (and probably should) be "prepping" for the end of the world as we know it.
Through a fast-paced, fragmented, first-person narrative that resembles a Twitter feed or personal diary more than a conventional novel, we follow Lizzie as she strives to be a "good" wife, mother, and sister, all while grappling with her own growing gloom and rising panic about what the future will look like for her family, country, species, and planet.
I've seen this classified as "pre-apocalyptic" fiction, and that seems to me a perfect description. Its similarities, both stylistically and thematically, with Patricia Lockwood's , one of my favorite reads from last year, are striking. But where that novel focused more on social media (and Twitter in particular), Offill's contribution to this emerging new genre feels more expansive and empathic, a literary time capsule capturing more broadly how it feels to be alive at this precise, terrifying moment in time.
Even while everybody's convincing themselves it's going to be okay, it's there in the air somehow. The whole thing is more physical than mental, he tells me.
Like hackles? The way a dog's hackles go up? Yes, he says.
I inhaled this book in one night. Considering the grim subject matter, it's a shockingly fun, breezy, and dare I say even cathartic read that couldn't have come at a better time.
I think one's enjoyment of this book will hinge on how one feels about the main character and fragmented literary style. I happened to love Lizzie's dry, self-deprecating wit and sharp, observational humor. In fact, she reminded me of several of my favorite friends here on GoodReads. And reading this felt like spending the night at a cozy little dive bar with a charming new friend, discussing our rising sense of dread about an uncertain future, but also finding flashes of humor and hope through shared laughter and liquor.
After all, isn't one of reading's greatest gifts the reassurance that we aren't alone in any of this?
My only real critiques are that the idiosyncratic writing style starts to wear thin by the end, feeling increasingly fractured, disoriented, and aimless. Although perhaps that was Offill's intent? I definitely didn't do the unique format any favors by trying to scarf this down in one sitting.
I also couldn't help but notice a bit of whitewashing going on here. I realize this was published before George Floyd and the summer of 2020's Racial Reckoning, but the conspicuous absence of any sustained reflections on systemic racism, police violence, or the rise of white supremacy in a book about our collective 21st century angst and future as a society and species, felt like an incomplete picture and a missed opportunity.
September 20, 2020
1 4 3, Canadian hunk
“A war-time romance, without the war, without the sex....” with the bookish hunk Quebecois, whilst taking care of the neurotic drug-addicted brother, and attending to her precursive decrepitude, mostly after husband took their young son out of town to get away from neo-negative Nelly, the narrator.
I expected this would be more like the first three (Autumn, Winter and Spring) of Ali Smith’s brilliant seasonal quartet.
I’ll say this: it kept me reading for 224 pages of an inner monologue, which was, over several spans, intellectually stimulating and provocative in the current climate (in that term’s multiple meanings). And, perhaps WEATHER gave me, a middle age male wasp, an inside view of the emotional romantic adventures of middle age females.
Don’t shoot me. But, do please, if you are of a mind, explain how an emotional romance cannot be as damaging to a marriage, simply because no sexual intercourse has yet occurred.
3.14 for 1 4 3.
PS: little did I know when I finished this novella that the world was on the very precipice of tumbling upside down from a highly contagious virus.
“A war-time romance, without the war, without the sex....” with the bookish hunk Quebecois, whilst taking care of the neurotic drug-addicted brother, and attending to her precursive decrepitude, mostly after husband took their young son out of town to get away from neo-negative Nelly, the narrator.
I expected this would be more like the first three (Autumn, Winter and Spring) of Ali Smith’s brilliant seasonal quartet.
I’ll say this: it kept me reading for 224 pages of an inner monologue, which was, over several spans, intellectually stimulating and provocative in the current climate (in that term’s multiple meanings). And, perhaps WEATHER gave me, a middle age male wasp, an inside view of the emotional romantic adventures of middle age females.
Don’t shoot me. But, do please, if you are of a mind, explain how an emotional romance cannot be as damaging to a marriage, simply because no sexual intercourse has yet occurred.
3.14 for 1 4 3.
PS: little did I know when I finished this novella that the world was on the very precipice of tumbling upside down from a highly contagious virus.
February 21, 2020
Offill writes in witty, short paragraphs that mimic diary-like entries. It is a quirky style that works surprisingly well. The ‘author’ of these entries is Lizzie Benson, a curious librarian that absorbs odd facts about climate change, religion, and much more. These blurbs are peppered among entries that catalog how she is ‘weathering’ life’s challenges. There is her brother, Henry, a recovering addict that she allows to live with her periodically. And then there is her side job answering doomsday emails sent to Sylvia Liller, creator of the podcast ‘Hell and High Water’. Sylvia found them too depressing to answer them herself.
Her husband Ben makes educational video games for a living as he was unable to find a job with his Classics PhD degree. Go figure! Son Eli now attends public school in contrast to his previous private school. Neighbors include the polite drug dealer and the rantor, Mrs. Kovinski. You decide if Lizzie is ‘weathering’ her life well! At least, she is trying!
Her husband Ben makes educational video games for a living as he was unable to find a job with his Classics PhD degree. Go figure! Son Eli now attends public school in contrast to his previous private school. Neighbors include the polite drug dealer and the rantor, Mrs. Kovinski. You decide if Lizzie is ‘weathering’ her life well! At least, she is trying!
March 25, 2020
Short. Interesting. A little strange. Funny. A little scary. Made me wonder. Made me ponder. Made me laugh.
I was inside Lizzie's head for a few hours, and I very much enjoyed being there. I started out highlighting a few quotes, but then realized I should just recommend the book.
Here are a couple though, just for fun.
"Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?"
" Old person worry: What if everything I do does? "
"One morning a student tells me failure is not an option, and is angered when I laugh. I assume a cheerful manner. I tell her, Hey, me too, I used to have plans!"
" Should we get a gun, Ben asks? But it's America. You don't even get on the news if you shoot less than three people".
There's more. Let me add another word - Enlightening.
I was inside Lizzie's head for a few hours, and I very much enjoyed being there. I started out highlighting a few quotes, but then realized I should just recommend the book.
Here are a couple though, just for fun.
"Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?"
" Old person worry: What if everything I do does? "
"One morning a student tells me failure is not an option, and is angered when I laugh. I assume a cheerful manner. I tell her, Hey, me too, I used to have plans!"
" Should we get a gun, Ben asks? But it's America. You don't even get on the news if you shoot less than three people".
There's more. Let me add another word - Enlightening.
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