She has a brother who’s a recovering addict. Offill: Well, she begins by worrying about her family. For folks who haven’t had a chance to enjoy this book yet, can you give us a little mini-catalog of the top few things Lizzie worries about? Philpott: I have to tell you, I lost track of how many times I set this book down and yelled out to my spouse, “This book somehow knows everything I feel anxious about!” So I think I may be a Lizzie, and I’ve heard other readers say the same thing. She’s dealing with the things that are going on in her own family and also taking on the joys and sorrows of everyone else she crosses paths with. So at the beginning of the novel, we’re seeing that flow of people in and out. Most of us know a Lizzie, who kind of works as a fake shrink to all the friends around her and even to the people who come into the library. The main character, the narrator, is Lizzie, and she’s a librarian at a university library. Jenny Offill: Weather is a novel about a librarian who slowly becomes a climate change doomer and then slowly comes back out of that again. Mary Laura Philpott: Let’s start with a zoomed-in focus on this latest book, and then we’ll talk more broadly about some other things. (She also shares what she’s been watching on TV during the pandemic.) In this interview for Nashville Public Television’s A Word on Words, Offill talks with host Mary Laura Philpott about how she translates the human experience into spare, sparkling novels packed with compelling emotional truth. In fact, her books have such a unique quality that it’s difficult to make comparisons when describing her writing if you were to liken her new book, Weather, to anything else, you would probably compare it best to her own prior book, the critically acclaimed and reader-beloved Dept.

An Interview with Jenny Offill, Author of WeatherĪuthor Jenny Offill has been called “the master of novels told in sly, burnished fragments” (New York Times).

Weather book jenny offill