BOOK JOURNAL: Weather by Jenny Offill
Entry #8: thoughts on a powerful little book about a librarian and her existential meditations on climate change via vignettes of her daily life
Weather by Jenny Offill
Rating: 5/5 stars
I picked up this book at Half Price Books on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. That particular day was intense and jam-packed on the work front, and I needed to get out of the office for a break. There’s an HPB just six minutes down the road from my office. A book store is my version of “getting some fresh air,” and the used book section of any bookstore is like my version of a sunny spring day. Stop and smell the paperbacks.
Upon arriving at HPB, I went straight to the sale rack in the back of the store—a friend of mine has a system when she visits HPB, and one of her tenets is to start at the sale rack and work your way to the front. Thank you, Sarah, for this tip. The universe presented me with this particular title within 3 minutes of perusing the sale rack. I was first drawn to the cover. I love a collage book cover, a la Beth Hoekel’s piece used for The Divines by Ellie Eaton.
The writing of Weather lives up to the gorgeous cover—don’t you love when that happens? Offill tells a story about a college librarian meditating on climate change and its related political ennui, and the concepts of retreat, community, partnership, and motherhood. It’s a powerfully packed little book—at only 200 pages, the structure propels the reader through these heavy topics via bite-sized vignettes, never spending too much time in one particular scene. The Guardian called this book “wit for end times,” and I agree. There’s lovely observational humor layered with the dark, wry humor British authors are so adept to use.
If you’re looking for a quick read and/or a palette cleanser, Weather is a great choice.
Favorite quotes from Weather:
“Do not believe that because you are a revolutionary you must feel sad.”
“‘How do you know all this?’
‘I'm a fucking librarian.’”“She has never liked me because I don’t have a proper degree. Feral librarians, they call us, as in just wandered out of the woods.”
“Later, I remember to tell Ben about the girl. ‘Seconds!’ I say, but he is unmoved. ‘People always talk about email and phones and how they alienate us from one another, but these sorts of fears about technology have always been with us,’ he claims.
When electricity was first introduced to homes, there were letters to the newspapers about how it would undermine family togetherness. Now there would be no need to gather around a shared hearth, people fretted. In 1903, a famous psychologist worried that young people would lose their connection to dusk and its contemplative moments.
Hahaha!
(Except when was the last time I stood still because it was dusk?)”“Funny how when you're married all you want is to be anonymous to each other again, but when you're anonymous all you want is to be married and reading together in bed.”
Related content:
A visual essay written by Jenny Offill for The Tate, titled Weather Report: Art and the Climate Emergency.
On the cover art:
This write-up in Spine Magazine on John Gall and his process of creating the art for the hardback version of Weather, which is the version I read and the art that drew me to the book (shown above).
This piece by the cover artist, Jo Walker, on her process of creating the art for the paperback version of Weather.
Offill’s other novel, Dept. of Speculation, which I have not read but is now on my TBR.
If you like Jenny Offill, you would also like:
This is an educated guess, because I (shamefully!) haven’t read any of her work yet, but Rachel Cusk seems to be a similarly meditative writer in terms of style. Her novel, Outline, has been on my TBR for years, and she has a new book called, Parade, which was released last month and has piqued my interest as well.
Sigrid Nunez. Start with The Vulnerables, which I chatted about in a Book Journal entry a few weeks ago.
Weather is the best little read - I have so many pictures of different quotes on my phone. My favorite snippet (that was the title of my first piece of writing I ever put out in the world here: https://onefineday.substack.com/p/no-doubt-you-too-have-experienced-time-6) is as follows:
"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."
Don't know why that glued itself into my brain, but I thought it was just an absolute little gem. The whole book is sneaky and wonderful.