Showing results by author "Jenny Offill" in All Categories

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.

In Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill crafts a shimmering, fragmentary portrait of a marriage under pressure and a mind wrestling with love, ambition, motherhood, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay afloat. With sharp wit and clarity, Offill captures the inner weather of a woman whose life is both expanding and collapsing, tracing the small moments that accumulate into seismic shifts. This is a novel about uncertainty, devotion, creativity, and the quiet catastrophes that define being human—told with Offill’s singular blend of humor, lyricism, and emotional precision.