Climate fiction, at least as a category, is getting to be a busy literary space, although you can find those who dismiss any genre writing as belonging anywhere near the term “literary.” Rest assured, I am not one such person. As Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater used to say, “It’s all rock and roll to me.” Of course, anyone who is happy to bring up rare allusions to odd content is more than likely not to fret about any boundary between literary and genre writing.

Weather, by Jenny Offill, may well define the literary side of climate fiction, and while there are plenty of others about which this could be said, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better example.  And when I say “better” I mean the book is terrific. Weather is also a fast read. Weather is entertaining in its P.O.V. main character, and the book’s structure is interesting (in a good way) and the book offers what I hold as an essential trait for climate fiction, which is that the book gets you thinking about where you are and where you are heading.

You won’t find an in-depth discussion about the climate crisis. Rather, the crisis is on the edges, often informing the character’s thoughts obliquely but present across the whole of the book. The structure of the book is many small fragments and short runs of text that don’t bother to smooth transitions from one to the other, but then there is no need to, since the author artfully includes enough in any one fragment to allow the reader to understand and follow chronology and sequence. There are poignant and uncomfortable characters, including the youngish middle aged woman P.O.V. and her brother, both a bit too close to each other and to the edge. There is marriage and family as a central topic that, in part, suggests the specter of what is to come for the children, and done in a unsettling but entirely subtle manner. One clever device Offill uses is the main character’s friend/mentor, who is a famous speaker on topics never entirely explained but who brings in climate crisis commentary across a larger world view. There is a stark-eyed sense of economic status in our country these days and as it relates to climate change, where the best advice for dealing with the near future is to be very rich.

Damn. Weather is an excellent novel and a darn good piece of climate fiction on top of that.