Weather is a very readable and perceptive new novel from Jenny Offill. Lizzie is torn between caring for her addict brother and her own family. Her own personal outlook changes, mostly for the worse, through the story. She works for Sylvia, a prominent environmental campaigner. After Trump is elected, there is a culture shift, and fewer people believe in protecting the environment. There is a creeping sense that the end is nigh.

Jenny Offil’s latest novel “Weather” is a bit like the weather itself: you’ll find sunshine and rain, it is often a bit cloudy and at times unbearably hot. She describes the life of a mother, hobby psychologist and librarian who is also worried by climate change and its implications it might have on her and her family’s life.

There is no real plot line that you can follow. Both Lizzie and her addicted brother Henry serious struggle in life and have difficulties finding their place and creating a kind of safe private environment for themselves. Nevertheless, it is often witty and I most certainly highly appreciate the author’s capacity of poetic narration.

Funny and sad and beautiful. Jenny Offill's Weather stares into the heart of the end of everything. The novel is so human and so timely. You don't know quite what's being done to you as you read it but by the end you know, by the end you feel the weight of the world in every line and perfect paragraph.

'Weather' exerts a subtle grip while you are reading it - somehow it is both fragmentary and sprawling, its sum much greater than its parts - but it has really stayed with me since I finished it. Unshowy in the way it uses the seemingly ordinary to describe the unstable state of the USA and the world at the moment - mental health crises, addiction, climate change (weather) - it works as a state of the nation novel (and so much more) without you really noticing. Full of fine observations - "Insomnia as a badge of honour. Proof that you are paying attention'; 'It is important to be on the alert for "the decisive moment"' - that moment never quite comes (whether) but the book is also full of such moments, seemingly unrecognised. Very grateful for having had the opportunity to read this. As others have pointed out, unlike most books, it could have been longer but is probably exactly the right length.

4.5 rounded up

Told in a series of short snippets, Weather follows Lizzie Benson, a librarian and ordinary woman who is navigating the post-Trump, post-truth landscape of life in contemporary America. Lizzie cares for her troubled recovering addict brother, her old beyond his years son and spent time looking after her dying mother. Through her conversations with them, and others - her former mentor Sylvia and patrons of the library in which she works - Offill weaves a tale which perfectly encapsulates the zeitgeist of late 2010s life. But this is all delicately balanced and Offill provides enough levity to prevent it all from getting too heavy and anxiety-inducing.

While they're totally different books the skill demonstrated here in perfectly evoking this weird time we're living through reminded me at times of what Ali Smith has done in her Seasons quartet. It's that wonderful kind of writing which demonstrates a lot of skill, often through restraint, but never feels forced.

Loved Dept.of Speculation told everyone to read this fantastic novel.Will be doing the same with Weather by this brilliant author..Her characters come alive are so real I feel like they are my friends or neighbors.Her way of writing dialogue sharing characters thoughts and worries pulls me right in to the story their lives.Loved this book highly recommend to all lovers of literary fiction,#netgalley#granta..

The best thing I’ve read this year, and it’s not even out until 2020.

Jenny Offill is up there amongst my favourite writers, with a form like no other.

This has definite echoes of her previous novel, Dept. of Speculation, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Ofill has this way of making really succinct and shrewd observations of some of the idiosyncrasies - and neuroses - we experience in life, both logically and emotionally.

The only criticism I ever have of Offill is that her books are so short. I miss them when I’ve got to the end.

Weather wades into the life of Liz, a librarian struggling to keep afloat amidst crises global, national and personal. She begins answering letters for her environmentalist ex-professor, and is overwhelmed by the prospect of ecological apocalypse and her inability to adequately prepare for the inevitable; she constantly worries about her recovering addict brother, whose dependence on her only grows after having a baby; she is anxious about being a good mother to her son, and her desire to protect him from the world; she briefly falls a bit in love with a handsome war journalist. Like Dept of Speculation (which I loved and read twice), this book is a disjointed mass of fears, hopes and stories that culminates in something that is greater than its parts. It is particularly sharp in its observations about America in the wake of Trump's election ('Your people have finally fallen into history, he said. The rest of us are already here.'), but is most beautiful when talking about love ('Sometimes your heart runs away with someone and all it takes is a bandanna on a stick.')

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

Weather by Jenny Offill is about a highly perceptive woman who is a librarian and a mother and sometimes the carer of her brother. I was enjoying it so much I would've liked it to be longer.