Climate Reading Group: Jenny Offill, Weather

The Climate Reading Group is a new group, which meets every six weeks or so to discuss books that tackle climate-related issues. The group is led by Linda France, the climate writer in residence for New Writing North and Newcastle University. You can sign up for one session or as many as you like.

For this meeting we will be discussing: Jenny Offill’s Weather

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practise her other calling: as an unofficial shrink. For years, she has supported her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but then her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. Sylvia has become famous for her 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 she 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 acknowledge the limits of what she can do. But if she can’t save others, then what, or who, might save her? And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in–funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.

The Zoom link will be emailed to you when you register!

As this group has limited capacity, please make sure to cancel if you are unable to attend, so that someone else can use the place. Thank you!