Top title by Elke Heidenreich: »Weather« by Jenni Offill about end

Read the video transcript here

Elke Heidenreich

This book today, this week, is very different from anything else that I am going to present to you.

The young author Ocean Vuong, who brought us the wonderful book: "On Earth, We Are Briefly Grandiose", said about it: "This book is so great, we are not ready for it and do not deserve it." I like that good, but I hope that we are ready for it anyway and that we deserve it.

Jenny Offill, Weather, published by Piper.

It's not about the weather and it's not a novel like the others. You just have to look at the typeface, I'll open it somewhere. Take a look, you can see that they are not told one after the other. There are individual pieces, snacks, thoughts, associations. They are little stories. Narrated by Lizzie Benson, who dropped out of college and now works in a library where crazy people come to borrow books. She has a husband, a mother, a son, a brother, whom she talks about. The man's name is Ben, he is quite sober and has both feet on the floor, which for Lizzie she sways very often. The son Eli is still young. He's just discovering the world and exactly on the page that I just showed you, Eli says or she writes about him:“Eli folds a sheet of white paper. 'Don't look,' he says, 'I'm making this up. Nobody but me will ever find out what it is. "And below it says:" My first place fear is the faster passing of the days. Probably just imagination, but I could swear I can feel it. "

That is, Lizzie describes her life, her thoughts, what is going on around her. Henry, her brother, was a drug addict, is no longer a junkie, meets a woman, has a family, has a child and is afraid that it will all go wrong. And I can tell you: everything goes wrong. The mother is very pious. She always stands in front of prisons and sings pious songs and then hangs chains with crosses in the trees so that the prisoners can see something beautiful when they look out the window. And for her little pension, she buys socks and gives these socks away to the homeless. And Lizzie, takes care of everyone, of her friends and takes care of everything. About the America under Trump, about the weather, about climate change. And she is the classic, smart, modern, completely overwhelmed woman who feels responsible for everything.But the kind of woman who still keeps going and without whom everything would collapse.

I love this book because it pulls you in when you read it, not least because of the great translation by the tried and tested Melanie Walz. You read thoughts and experiences and everyday things in a diary that you think and experience yourself. And you like this woman who writes here. She takes a job for her university professor, her former one, who has an end-of-time podcast, where crazy people and unconventional thinkers keep writing their worries. And Lizzie also answers these letters, these emails, and there we meet all the crazy people and all the fears that are in the world. Lizzie just holds on. But I have to read something small to them again: “And then it's a new day and another day and another. But I don't want to talk about it now, because you have undoubtedly also experienced what time is. «Yes,we have also experienced. And that has so much wit and so much humor. And so often I feel reminded of myself that I still have to read something to you: “I don't know what's wrong with me. Apparently I can't stop making wrong decisions. The strange thing is that you don't sneak up on it. I can see them coming for miles. ”I do too. I see the wrong decisions coming and I make them anyway. Jenny Offill quietly teaches us not to despair.I can see them coming for miles. ”I do too. I see the wrong decisions coming and I make them anyway. Jenny Offill quietly teaches us not to despair.I can see them coming for miles. ”I do too. I see the wrong decisions coming and I make them anyway. Jenny Offill quietly teaches us not to despair.

We all make terrible mistakes. It's part of life. This life is not easy either, but with a touch of ease and with a few good friends it can still be endured. I have to see each of us how I survive, not at the expense of something or someone else, but together with friends, with reasonable thoughts and thus to remain an upright person. And that's why we need this book, even if we, dear Ocean Vuong, may not have really earned it yet. My gift of the week: Jenny Offill's »Weather«, by the way, it's not about the weather at all, published by Piper.