WEATHER | Jenny Offill
READ OCTOBER 2020
This book was read in the original LAX LAB climate fiction book club, which was active between 2020 and 2023. 🕷
WEATHER |
Jenny Offill
2020
Granta / Penguin
“ … the core delusion is that I am here and you are there’”
— Jenny Offill, Weather, 2020
Meet Lizzie Benson, a university librarian living in Brooklyn with her family. Her former mentor Sylvia hosts a popular climate change podcast ‘Hell and High Water’. She hires Lizzie to assist her in answering the doomsday mail that she receives, messages that span the political spectrum.
Weather by Jenny Offill. is part of an expanding subset of climate fiction that is not set off in some distant, possible, dystopian future. Weather takes place in our present where climate change is woven into the fabric and concerns of everyday life. Taking place in New York City, the novel is an exploration of Trump’s America and the rise of the right. With wit and dark humour, Jenny Offill explores the angst of this moment. This novel is about the weather of climate change but also the weather of politics, emotions, and the personal.
Further reading, listening, viewing
'Weather by Jenny Offill review – wit for the end times'
Kate Clanchy, The Guardian, 13 February 2020
'Jenny Offill’s obligatory note of hope'
First Draft podcast with Mitzi Rapkin, 2 March 2020
'Stormy 'Weather' captures our anxious age with bracing wit'
Heller McAlpin, NPR, 11 February 2020
'Disaster ‘prepping’ was once an American pastime. Today, it’s mainstream again'
Nina Strochlic, National Geographic, 10 November 2020
'Jenny Offill’s ‘Weather’ Is emotional, planetary and very turbulent'
Ping Zhu, New York Times, 7 February 2020
Original LAX LAB book cover illustration by Emma Arnold, 2020
