Jenny Offill’s casually devastating new novel Weather is a lovely, quietly ticking timebomb.
Lizzie rushes to drop her son off at school. Running late and in a hurry, like so many of us so often are:
A last sprint across the playground and we make it just in time. I’m out of breath, sweaty, sad. I kiss Eli’s head, trying to undo the rush.
But then, it turns:
Why didn’t I have more kids so I could have more chances?
Such is the quiet glory of Jenny Offill, whose previous novel, Dept. of Speculation, garnered wide acclaim as one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014. Weather (Knopf, 2020), the highly anticipated latest from Offill, returns to the author’s infamous tendency to discreetly detonate, transforming a seemingly common practice into a regret-tinged rumination. Not unlike Dept. of Speculation, Weather does more of what the author does best: displaying the world gently, perhaps at a slant, before turning on heel and smashing it entirely. Idiosyncratic neuroses paired with a universal existential dread dance so gracefully in Weather that even helping set up for a meditation class is ripe for Offill’s specific brand of nonchalant devastation, the type that sneaks up on you before laying you out entirely. A well rehearsed routine.
Step:
It’s slow today so I help her set up for class. Cushions for the strong, chairs for the weak.
Step:
“You should stay,” she always tells me, but I never do.
And turn:
Not sure where to sit.
Where Dept. of Speculation was a deeply internal and intimate portrait of a marriage, Weather is a broad-stroked sketch of a young family grappling with a brand of political tension as ubiquitous as air. The novel follows Lizzie, the wife/mother/sister of a young family struggling to navigate the landscape of post-2016 election and pre-, well, end of the world—which is to say the book is entirely relatable. There are commutes to trudge through, frenemies to avoid, brothers to worry about, emails to respond to, but underneath the quotidian is a seductive undercurrent of despair that calmly threatens to swallow us whole—a rabbit hole of melancholy you can tumble down simply by reading the news.
Much of the dread presented is in part due to one of Lizzie’s jobs as email correspondent for Sylvia, an environmental activist and friend. Lizzie responds to emails from strangers, emails about the dubious state of the environment, emails worried about the future. Emails like “What are the best ways to prepare my children for the coming chaos?”—which lends itself to a less-than-lighthearted work experience. These emails, presented in tandem with scenes of young family life, elevate the mundane into something more foreboding, even sinister, akin to watching a car crash in slow motion and bracing yourself for impact. Offill transforms a simple scene with markers into something much more daunting:
Eli is at the kitchen table, trying all his markers one by one to see which still work. Ben brings him a bowl of water so he can dip them in to test.
And turn:
According to the trajectory, New York City will begin to experience dramatic, life-altering temperatures by 2047.
This type of simmering paranoia threatens to come to a boil after the 2016 election, describing the aftermath as “the same after 9/11, there was that hum in the air.” Lizzie and her husband constantly take their temperature, wondering if they should get a gun or an IUD (“But it’s suddenly hard to get in to see a doctor; the appointments are all booked for months and the waiting rooms at the walk-in clinics are full of nervous white women”). The panic quietly ratchets higher and higher, the goalposts for meltdown keep moving and moving:
My friend met me at the diner for coffee. His family fled Iran one week before the Shah fell. “Your people have finally fallen into history,” he said. “The rest of us are already here.”
Relationships are at the core of Weather: a citizen’s relationship to country, a human’s relationship to environment, certainly, but equally represented is a mother’s relationship to her son, a wife’s relationship to her husband, a sister’s relationship to her brother. Lizzie’s problematic codependency with her brother, Henry, remains one of the most fascinating aspects of Weather, and provides a compelling dynamic. Henry feels equal parts son and husband in his own strange way and watching their relationship rise, fall, tear, and patch is enthralling.
Offill’s reputation for gentle destruction might seem to make Weather a tough read, and admittedly its culmination can feel rather heavy, but the novel’s blithe format makes it more than palatable, easily metabolized, its morsels of reality checks buried well enough inside. Like Dept. of Speculation, Offill returns to her patented style of fragmented prose. Weather is written as a series of observations and events, lightly strung together by a sturdy and clever narrator. The novel—punctuated by emails, jokes, and cards—speeds by. In praise of the book, Sheila Heti described Offill’s style as “near-pointillism” and she’s right: this litany of experiences pieced together by a narrative allow your mind to fill in the blank spaces, and with these layers create a whole.
What is most lasting about Weather is a lingering maladjustment: a doubtful, cautiously pessimistic look at our future that forces readers to wonder if things are that bad, if they will get worse, and what we should do when it does. The question readers are left with is “Should we be freaking out more?” Because Weather is both about the weather—our personal atmosphere and our universal ambience—and it is the weather: dangerous, unpredictable, and turning on a dime.