Weather – Jenny Offill (2020) 201 pages
I have broken my self-imposed page limit for defining a novella (70-200 pages) by including Jenny Offill’s Weather, which breaches by one whole page. I regret nothing: I had really enjoyed her Dept. of Speculation when I read it for this project back in 2020 and was pleased to be picking her up again.
Lizzie is a college librarian, looked down upon by other librarians because she doesn’t have formal qualifications. She has a lovely husband Ben, and a son Eli. Her brother Henry, now sober, reappears and her mother rings occasionally causing tensions but nothing extraordinary. Still, family life can be exhausting:
“I’m too tired for any of it. The compromise is that we all eat ice cream and watch videos of goats screaming like women.”
Lizzie takes a job with her old college professor Sylvia, who hosts a podcast about climate change.
“Once I took Eli. We stood and looked at some kind of meadowland. He waited patiently until we could go back to the car.
Children cannot abide a vista, Sylvia said.”
Wading through Sylvia’s email correspondence is heavy-going “I’m really hoping all these people who write to Sylvia are crazy, not depressed.” and in the wake of ongoing environmental destruction and the election of a President whose second term we are now in, Lizzie starts to become a doomsday prepper.
“My book ordering history is definitely going to get me flagged by some evil government algorithm. Lots and lots of books about Vichy France and the French Resistance and more books than any civilian could possibly need about spycraft and fascism. Luckily, there is a Jean Rhys novel in there and a book for Eli called How to Draw Robots. That’ll throw them off the scent.”
But while Weather is absolutely about anxiety and fear of what is happening now and what will happen in the future, Lizzie’s voice remains witty and self-deprecating:
“Then one day I have to run to catch a bus. I am so out of breath when I get there that I know in a flash all my preparations for the apocalypse are doomed. I will die early and ignobly.”
Like the Dept. of Speculation, Weather is written in a fragmentary style, with the focus primarily on the female narrator. We remain inside her head as she struggles to sustain family life, work, and the wider demands of living now. I thought Offill balanced all of this expertly.
The humour never detracted from the seriousness of the wider issues, but it also carefully portrayed Lizzie trying to find a way to live when the world – both big and small – seems overwhelming.
“My husband is reading the Stoics before breakfast. That can’t be good, can it?”
madame bibi lophile recommends 
I read this in the last year of Trump’s first term hoping it would be his last. As I remember there’s a lot of white space between the fragments so you could argue that it could be compressed into under 200 pages!
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Yes good point Susan! It meets my criteria really 😉
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I have strong memories of Dept. of Speculation but not of Weather… I went back to check my notes and I had written that Weather had some absolute gems scattered throughout but overall left me feeling frazzled… Hmmm… tempted for a re-read come #NovNov to see what the ‘frazzled’ was about!
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I can believe that because it is about anxiety, it could definitely induce frazzlement! But I really enjoyed her humour and felt this helped balance it.
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It is indeed your challenge, so do what you want! As for the book, it sounds excellent. I’ve not ready any of Offill’s work but htis one does appeal.
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Thanks Kaggsy 😁 Glad this one appeals!
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Oh no; I have just reserved this one from the library despite having a rather towering pile already! This definitely appeals to me and I enjoyed Dept of Speculation and it is short (even if it is one page over the strict qualification for a novella – your rules rule and I am all the more impressed as it is a long ‘novella’ or you could retitle the challenge 30 novellas and one novel a day for May!)
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It’s a quick read, don’t worry! I really hope you enjoy it 😊
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I love the sound of this, her voice is very recognisable; is the great conspiracy of our age that we all try to outmanoeuvre the algorithm!
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Haha! So true. I find the news algorithm on my phone so strange. It’s always highlighting soap updates or stories about the royal family. I don’t watch any soaps and I don’t think I’ve ever clicked a story on the royals…
I hope you enjoy this one if you get to it Jane!
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Is your phone in the room where there might be broadcasts about these themes on either TV/radio/streaming or conversations playing out? That will probably solve the mystery.
I quite enjoyed reading this, but I was left with the sense that perhaps I didn’t fully appreciate what she was doing (and, simultaneously, the sense that I didn’t think I could suss it out even if I tried LOL).
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No it’s not…the mystery deepens… who are these soap-watching royalists impacting my algorithm??? 🤣
Glad you quite enjoyed this even though it didn’t all together work for you.
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No?! Well, now I am definitely intrigued! If you ever do figure it out, you’ll have to let us know!
It didn’t not work. I just had that she’s-ever-so-much-smarter-than-I-am feeling. And that’s not a bad thing. (Not an infrequent thing either. lol)
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I will! I live in a flat, I wonder if my neighbours viewing can affect it??
When I studied early modern theatre my tutor said “all these dramatists are cleverer than you. Just accept it like I did.” 🤣
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Maybe! In this apartment we can’t hear our neighbour’s stuff, but in previous apartments we’ve been able to hear every word. And I’m sure phones are better equipped than my ears. Mine (indoors) once gave travel recommendations based on a conversation “overheard” in the driveway, which definitely stood out. heheh
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I absolutely loved Dept of Speculation, so I’m glad to hear this one sounds very good too – it’s on my wishlist already, but now even moreso!
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Really hope you enjoy this one Simon! She’s very witty, alongside all that she (understandably) despairs over.
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Tut-tut! Breaking the rules, eh? I’m afraid I’ll have to confiscate your chocolate supplies. I like the wit in the quotes, and am completely with her on not really having the energy to be a survivalist.
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I’d be the world’s worst survivalist 🤣
Don’t take my chocolate FF, I need it now more than ever!!
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I preferred Dept of Speculation, but did enjoy this one a lot too. There’s all that white space – so it can count as a novella!
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Yes DoS is probably my preference too, although I enjoyed this a lot. It definitely counts as a novella 😉
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