Weather is Jenny Offill's third novel. I have not read Last Things but now I must complete the oeuvre, to this point. She has also written a few children's books and co-edited a couple anthologies. She broke out with Dept. of Speculation, which is a triumph of the form, and was reviewed here just three months ago. It took six years for me to find it, and it cut me deep. So I put a hold on Weather at the library immediately thereafter. It is difficult to say which book is better. Opinions may vary. It is not going to be easy for me to explain why, but I will admit a slight preference to Dept. of Speculation. I recommend either book to everyone. And it makes sense to read them in chronological order. It is worth noting, however, that Weather is the slightly more difficult read. There is a larger cast of characters, who actually have names, and the book is slightly longer. It is written in the same style, but the "tiny episodes" stretch out further, and there are six chapters or parts to the novel. There is also a deeper theme with implications for the whole of humanity.
That theme is climate change and environmental chaos. Dept. of Speculation is about a smaller domestic situation that should ring true for anyone that has ever had second thoughts about a serious relationship. Weather does tell a relatively straightforward story about a domestic situation as well. The difference is the backdrop. Both narrators have many similarities, and both experience a kind of spiraling out of their psyche. If the former is about how one moves forward after a trying time, this is about how one protects a child that will enter the prime of their life in 2047. And doomsday prepping.
As far as a plot, like DOS, it is minimal. At first blush, this is quite a different book, however. It is a first-person narrative, whereas DOS is third person. Lizzie is mother to Eli, wife to Ben, and sister to Henry. Eli is somewhere around first grade. Henry is a younger brother struggling with substance abuse issues, who moves in to stay with Lizzie and her family at the beginning. Lizzie works at a university library, Ben works as a programmer of educational video games from home, and Henry begins a job writing greeting cards. He finds this through Catherine, a woman who is also in recovery. About 50 pages into the novel, he moves in with her, and around page 100, they have a baby (Iris) and quickly get married. Later some of Henry's addiction issues resurface, and he moves back in, while juggling divorce and co-parenting. Lizzie also works for Sylvia, her professor from grad school, reading and responding to all of the letters from listeners to her podcast on climate change (Hell or High Water). And there are even more minor characters (Lizzie's mother, her driver from a car service, the owner of her local bodega, her meditation teacher, two neighbors, another parent at Eli's school and her daughter, a co-worker, a friend, a couple of dudes).
It may be useful to consider exactly why there are six chapters, because there are none in DOS, there are only asterisks to separate each section of blocks of text. The asterisks are again used to close out each of the hundred or so "tiny episodes." The chapters may just signal that there is more "action" in this narrative.
Chapter 1 is 64 pages long and ends at the beginning of summer (2016?), just as Lizzie has her birthday and becomes "officially middle-aged." Chapter 2 is 37 pages long and ends as the new school year begins, Iris's birth is imminent, and Lizzie's mother comes into town for it. Chapter 3 is 28 pages long and clearly begins in November.
Allow me a brief aside from this text-gloss to express my amazement that, on the morning of the 2016 election, I happened to read a section of Americanah that reflected warmly on the 2008 election. And again, on the morning of the 2020 election, I happened to read a section of this book, dreadfully reminiscing about the 2016 election:
"And in the ether, people asking the same question again and again. To the yours-to-losers, to the both-the-samers, to the wreck-it-allers.
Happy now?
The path is getting...narrower. That's how Ben told me. He was doing the math in his head.
But it could still...?
It's not impossible.
And so we stayed up and watched until the end." (111)
Chapter 4 is 50 pages and is the turning point of the novel. I have already spoiled enough above. This is when the theme begins to overtake the narrative, as Lizzie drifts away from domestic concerns while Ben and Eli leave to take a "glamping" road trip with Ben's sister to California. She becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday as she meets a new friend and is educated in survivalism while her family is away. This chapter is basically about that relationship.
Chapter 5 is 5 pages long. Eli and Ben return home, and there is a short reflection on the events in Chapter 4.
Chapter 6 is 8 pages long and the book ends perfectly. It has a better ending than DOS, and DOS has a very good ending as well. There is an obligatory note of hope at the end that serves as a supplement to the text and transforms the narrative.
Like DOS, the writing is simple and pithy. There is just a lot more going on in this novel, and it does not cohere as beautifully as DOS. It is cohesive, make no mistake, but it would seem almost wrong, in a way, if Offill wrote an ending that wrapped everything up in a neat package. Notes of uncertainty are present in each ending, but there is deeper uncertainty in this one, owing to the thematic element. Perhaps this exchange highlights that horror:
"Somehow, I get seated halfway down the table from her [Sylvia]. I'm trapped next to this young techno-optimist guy. He explains that current technology will no longer seem strange when the generation who didn't grow up with it finally ages out of the conversation. Dies, I think he means.
His point is that eventually all those who are unnerved by what is falling away will be gone, and after that, there won't be any more talk of what has been lost, only of what has been gained.
But wait, that sounds bad to me. Doesn't that mean if we end up somewhere we don't want to be, we can't retrace our steps?
He ignores this, blurs right past me to list all the ways he and his kind have changed the world and will change the world. He tells me that smart houses are coming, that soon everything in our lives will be hooked up to the internet of things, blah, blah, blah, and we will be connected through social media to every other person in the world. He asks me what my favored platforms are.
I explain that I don't use any of them because they make me feel too squirrelly. Or not exactly squirrelly, more like a rat who can't stop pushing a lever.
Pellet of affection! Pellet of rage! Please, please, my pretty!
He looks at me and I can see him calculating all the large and small ways I am trying to prevent the future. 'Well, good luck with that, I guess,' he says." (38-39)
Later, there is a scene with Lizzie and Ben in bed, paying reference to a certain website where they can enter Eli's birth year and watch numbers go up, and up. Then later still:
"I had that thought again. The one with numbers in it. It bent the light.
Eli is at the kitchen table, trying all his markers one by one to see which will still work. Ben brings him a bowl of water so he can dip them in to test. According to the current trajectory, New York City will begin to experience dramatic, life-altering temperatures by 2047." (106)
In a certain way, this novel is more about the notion of dread as it relates to climate change, rather than climate change itself. Published as it was in February 2020, its timing could not possibly be more prescient. This is not about a pandemic, but the pandemic brought the entire world together in a way that climate change also should. Human beings will not outlast the depletion of natural resources on our planet, try as others might to establish colonies on Mars (briefly referenced in the novel), but if they are to live as long and as well as possible, they must band together to fight a common enemy. It is difficult because with climate change, that enemy is ourselves, and the wasteful practices that we have been conditioned to believe are normal and necessary. Only after a cataclysmic event do we realize the value of appropriate precautions.
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"Q: What is the difference between a disaster and an emergency?
A: A disaster is a sudden event that causes great damage or loss. An emergency is a situation in which normal operations cannot continue and immediate action is required so as to prevent a disaster." (196)
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So too with the past 8 months in this world. We have experienced an economic disaster due to a prolonged period of patchwork emergency measures, phasing in and out, stressing the overwhelming necessity of bringing people back to work, suggesting we not go out and do things, but still allowing us to do so, presuming we will take appropriate precautions. So many people have gotten tired of hearing about how awful it is that they just stop caring, whether it be social distancing or climate change. We can affect positive change in both by taking ourselves out of the equation, reducing our carbon footprint to zero and sitting alone in a room away from airborne pathogens. After years, and years, I am continually amazed by the cavalier attitude so many people have towards recycling. And I get it, a society that recycles perfectly will not stop climate change on that basis alone. There may be no way to stop climate change (just as possibly, the virus will continue to mutate) and in the face of that uncertainty and despair, so many people give up or stop caring.
People say, "I don't want my grandchildren to be brought into a dying planet." Think of your children, and your children's children, people say--never mind whether you actually have them. Some of us may scoff at the phrase, and yet family has a way of increasing the stakes. You have to fight to hold onto those you love, and those you have pledged to love and prepare for this twisted 21st century life. You have to think of your family, and do what you can to keep them safe. It is hard to see so many isolated, unconnected individuals as family, particularly when the division in this country instills the notion that "the other" has no rational basis for their beliefs, that they don't deserve to live, anyways.
Offill doesn't write explicitly about such matters but this book shows how people really are, how self-interested and distracted and unconcerned they are for those outside of their bubble. It hints that agreement as to a sort of shared humanity will be necessary before we can implement solutions to rehabilitate our ravaged earth. Weather is back at the library now, but I expect to return to obligatorynoteofhope.com as a reminder that there are still good people in the world, and that we can choose to be like them if we are brave enough.
Grade: A-
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