Summary and Reviews of Weather by Jenny Offill

Weather by Jenny Offill

Weather

by Jenny Offill
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • Feb 11, 2020, 224 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2021, 224 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

From the author of the nationwide bestseller Dept. of Speculation--one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year--a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis.

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.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

"How do you maintain your optimism?" That question is at the heart of Jenny Offill's Weather. Although the novel raises far more questions than it answers (and that's part of the point, after all), Lizzie's experience seems to suggest that the answer to this main question lies in understanding and forgiveness—for our families, for our neighbors, for utter strangers and, not least of all, for ourselves...continued

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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).

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Beyond the Book



Climate Change Podcasts

Person Holding Smartphone with Tree Reflected in Screen Part of the plot of Jenny Offill's Weather involves the protagonist, Lizzie, answering questions posed by listeners to her former academic mentor's disaster-preparedness podcast, Hell and High Water. As issues surrounding climate change increasingly propel public conversation, real-world counterparts to this fictional podcast abound. Here is a roundup of some of the best podcasts for understanding the climate emergency.

Climate One
This weekly podcast grew out of an influential forum that brings together leaders in the fields of energy, the economy and the environment. Timely topics include climate psychology and climate and human migration; the program also profiles notable scientists and authors working and writing in these fields. ...

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Read-Alikes

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