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Call Number: Fiction / Offill, Jenny, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Pittsfield Branch, Traverwood Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	Due 05-16-2024
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Offill, Jenny	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"This is a Borzoi book."
"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 husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's 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 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"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Wry, Wise, Dizzying, Alarming, and Hilarious submitted by sVfGI7Glt2pz7GZgVB90 on July 14, 2020, 7:32am A series of intervallic vignettes, this "novel" is narrated by librarian Lizzie, who speaks with forthrightness about her daily preoccupations and common anxieties. These include fears about her troubled mother, her recovering-addict brother – and the climate crisis.

In its musings, jokes, and reminiscences, Offill whizzes back and forth between the micro and the macro.

This may not appeal to some, there isn't really a plot after the first fourth of the book.

No submitted by eamcdon on May 27, 2021, 9:30am If you want to read someone's random thoughts written in single paragraphs then this is the book for you. If you want a actual story that has a point then this is NOT the book for you.

... submitted by avandeusen on July 17, 2021, 10:35am Wanted this book to be much more than it was, but at the very least it is an interesting writing style.

worked for me submitted by savannahwhaley42 on July 18, 2023, 10:29am one of the few novels I've read where the protagonist is adequately concerned about climate change. it's funny and poignant and meandering and i had a great time reading it.