Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Jenny Orfill's popular cli-fi novel WEATHER gets rave reviews in ✔️WAPO, ✔️NYT, ✔️NPR, ✔️LAT, ✔️NEW STATESMAN


Have you seen the rave reviews already online for Weather by Jenny Offill?

If you liked the comic cli-fi novels

SOLAR by Ian McEwan,

THE LAMENTATIONS OF ZENO by German novelist Ilija Trojanow titled ''Eis Tau'' in German (literally ''Ice Thaw'') and translated by Philip Boehm for VERSO BOOKS for its MAY 2016 debut in English,

and SOUTH POLE STATION by Ashley Shelby

✔️ CHECK: WAPO
✔️ CHECK: NYT (2 reviews, one a book review, the other a profile of the author)
✔️ CHECK: NPR
✔️ CHECK: NEW STATESMAN
✔️ CHECK: L.A. Times

Jenny Offil was
born in 1968 as the daughter of two private-school English teachers. She spent her childhood years in various American states, including Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and North Carolina. Jenny Offill attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jenny Offill’s new novel follows the story of Lizzie, a librarian, who used to be a graduate student until she dropped out to care for her brother who was struggling with addiction. Lizzie’s old mentor, Sylvia, asks her to help with the mail she gets in response to her climate change podcast, called, yes, “Hell and High Water.” Soon, Lizzie is spiraling into a doomed attitude regarding climate change, and her answers get more and more cynical. It’s set in the lead-up, and the aftermath, of the USA 2016 Donald Trump election, and written in Offill’s signature lyrical prose.

In the novel's story arc, Lizzie's husband, Ben, who is Jewish, is very worried about where America is headed with Trump in power, and  after the elections, we learn “Ben looks into the Israel thing; I look into the idea of true north.” NOTE BLOG READERS: This means that Ben who is an American Jew with liberal attitudes about life and politics, is so worried about what might happen with Trump in power that is is looking into making ''aliyah'' (look it up!) to Israel, which means he is thinking about giving up his USA passport and becoming an Israeli citizen.

While Ben thinks of emigrating to Israel for safety's sake, his wife Lizzie wants to "look into the idea of the true north." That means she is thinking of getting out of the Lower 48 and heading up north to Canada.

All-in-all, the novel is a fun, comic and depressing cli-fi read about climate change, ''but a deeply necessary one," says one reviwer. And an editor in the book industry, Katie Adams, tweeted regarding Weather, “[Offill] will not make you feel safe. She will make you feel less alone.”

Read WEATHER if you’re into: cli-fi, thinking about the future, compulsively readable stories.

From Jenny Offill -- ''a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis.''STORY GOES LIKE THIS:

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with Jewish husband Ben and their son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her so very prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of western civilization. As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience -- but still she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks . . . And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in -- funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.

FOR EARLIER NEWS OF THE BOOK, SEE:
http://northwardho.blogspot.com/2020/01/jenny-offill-writes-cli-fi-novel-and.html?m=1

NOTES: Dictionary of American Family Names




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PART 2

Is there such a thing as ''Jewish cli-fi''?
Some are thinking about it.
by staff writer with agencies

If there's a Jewish story everywhere, as the slogan of this online
newspaper puts it, there's definitely a good one behind the
publication of a new comic cli-fi novel in New York and the author who gave birth
to it.
Have you seen the rave reviews already online for ''Weather'' by Jenny Offill?
The literary world is buzzing, from the New York Times (two reviews on different days by different staff critics), the Los Angeles Times, NPR, New Statesman and The Washington Post. Every review was a glowing thumbs up.
Offill, born in 1968, grew up in a Jewish family as the daughter of two private-school English teachers. She spent her childhood years in various places, including Massachusetts, California, Indiana, and North Carolina.
Her new ''climate change fiction'' genre novel follows the story of Lizzie, a librarian, who used to be a graduate student until she dropped out to care for her brother who was struggling with addiction. Soon, Lizzie is spiraling into a doomed attitude regarding climate change as she becomes more and more cynical. The small novel is set in the lead-up to, and the aftermath after, of the 2016 Donald Trump election.
In the novel's story arc, Lizzie's husband, Ben, who is Jewish, is very worried about where America is headed with Trump in power, and  after the elections, we learn that “Ben looks into the Israel thing; I look into the idea of true north.”
This means that Ben, who is an American Jew with liberal attitudes about life and politics, is so worried about what might happen with Trump in power that is looking into making ''aliyah'' to Israel, which means he is thinking about giving up his American nationality and becoming an Israeli citizen.
But while Ben thinks of emigrating to Israel for safety's sake, his non-Jewish wife Lizzie wants to "look into the idea of the true north." That means she is thinking of getting out of the Lower 48 and heading up north to Canada.
All-in-all, the novel is a fun, comic and sometimes depressing cli-fi read about climate change, ''but a deeply necessary one," says one reviewer. And an editor in the book industry, Katie Adams, sent out a tweet on Twitter regarding ''Weather,'' saying:“[Offill] will not make you feel safe. She will make you feel less alone.”

Is there such a thing as ''Jewish cli-fi''? Some are thinking about it.


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