Minus the sex': 'And then it is another day and another and another but I will not go on about this because no doubt you too have experienced time.' This is what she has to say, for example, about coming down from a flirtation that was 'like a wartime romance. You make it look so easy.' The same might be said for sympathetic Lizzie, who again deploys sharp wit (plus a series of corny jokes forwarded from her boss) to deflect anxiety. of Speculation, Offill's narrator is called 'a truth bomb' and a person about whom 'no one has ever said. Ben posts an important reminder above his desk: 'You are not some disinterested bystander. Lizzie and her husband research doomsteads, rounding up the usual suspects for safe haven - 'Oh, Canada!' Their list of requirements includes arable land, a water source, and train access. Nor does her brother's relapse following the birth of his daughter. Her side job answering doomsday emails from listeners of her former professor's podcast on climate change doesn't help. Reminiscent of Helen Ellis's off-the-wall American Housewife and Lydia Davis' micro-stories, Offill knows how to wield wit and paragraph breaks for maximum impact.īook Reviews 'Speculation' Shows Good Stories Come In Small Packages, Tooīut Lizzie - and our times - are not wired for glorious reassurance. The novel's narrator, Lizzie Benson, has a sardonic voice and a way with punchlines. This potent, appealing little book is about how we weather this sense of doom - with humor, incredulity, panic, disaster preparedness, or, best of all, action.

Offill astutely compares the 'hum in the air' to the one that followed 9/11. Offill's signature achievement here is to capture the angst specific to our particular moment in time - the rising tide of anxiety, especially in New York City, about a world threatened by climate change and the ascension of right-wing strongmen, which deepens after the 2016 election. While marriage and motherhood remain on the radar, Weather swirls around amber waves of dread. Offill's new novel, Weather, takes a similarly clever diary-like tack, but it's even better - darkly funny and urgent, yet more outwardly focused, fueled by a growing preoccupation with the scary prospect of a doomed earth. of Speculation (2014), a wonderful series of witty, plangent short dispatches about marriage, motherhood, and thwarted aspirations from an unnamed female writer whose life ventures dangerously close to the brink. Jenny Offill broke through the funk of a 15-year gap between her first and second novels with Dept. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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