Reading Order
Weather Reading Order
Jenny Offill's Weather (2020) applies the same fragmented, white-space prose of Dept. of Speculation to the specific anxiety of our historical moment — climate change, political division, and the difficulty of maintaining a private life while aware of global catastrophe. Lizzie, a librarian, begins answering listener questions for her brother's podcast about the end of the world, and the novel builds from her observations, quotes, and fragments into an account of what it feels like to live in a time when everything might be ending. At 215 pages, it is even more compressed than its predecessor.
Where to start
Weather
Complete Weather Book List
- 1Buy
Weather
Jenny Offill·2020·Stand-alone, though Dept. of Speculation (2014) is Offill's breakthrough and the better starting point for most readers. Weather is best read after Dept. of Speculation.
Weather — Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read Dept. of Speculation before Weather?
Weather is stand-alone — it has no plot connections to Dept. of Speculation and can be read independently. However, most readers who try Weather without having read Dept. of Speculation find its form slightly disorienting, because Offill's fragmented approach is easier to enter through the more emotionally immediate story of Dept. of Speculation. For readers new to Offill, Dept. of Speculation is the recommended starting point; Weather is then the natural follow-up.
What is Weather by Jenny Offill about?
Weather follows Lizzie, a librarian at a university, who begins answering listener mail for her brother Will's environmental podcast about climate change and collapse. The novel builds from her observations of her students, her clients, her family, and the apocalyptic questions her listeners ask, into a portrait of what it feels like to maintain daily life while acutely aware that civilization is in crisis. It is about the specific anxiety of caring — about the planet, about the future, about what to tell your child — in a time when caring feels both essential and futile.
What should I read after Weather by Jenny Offill?
Readers who loved Weather typically move to Dept. of Speculation (2014), Offill's breakthrough, if they haven't read it. For other fragmented literary novels about climate and environmental anxiety, Richard Powers's The Overstory — about trees and the humans who love them — and Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered are strong companions. For more Offill-style compressed fiction about the difficulty of living in a broken world, Mathias Énard's Compass and Jenny Zhang's Sour Heart are close.
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.