Fiction

Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a 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 soon Lizzie’s old mentor makes a proposal. She’s become famous for her 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. From Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation, comes Weather (Knopf), a shimmering tour de force about a family, and a nation, in crisis. Offill will be joined in…