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Starred review from November 18, 2019
A librarian becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday preparations in Offill’s excellently sardonic third novel (following Dept. of Speculation). Lizzie, a university librarian working in Brooklyn, already feels overwhelmed with guiding her son, Eli, through New York City’s crowded elementary school system without the extra strain of dealing with her addict brother’s constant crises. Mostly happily married to a computer game designer, Lizzie introduces anxiety into her marriage when she takes a second job answering emails for a former mentor who is now the host of a popular podcast about futurism. Fielding questions from both apocalypse truthers and preppers for the coming climate-induced “scarcity,” Lizzies becomes convinced that doomsday is approaching. Her scattered, frenzied voice is studded with arresting flourishes, as when she describes releasing a fly: “Quiet in the cup. Hard to believe that isn’t joy, the way it flies away when I fling it out the window.” Set against the backdrop of Lizzie’s trips to meditation classes, debates with a taxi driver, the 2016 presidential election, and constant attempts to avoid a haughty parent at Eli’s school, Lizzie’s apocalyptic worries are bittersweet, but also always wry and wise. Offill offers an acerbic observer with a wide-ranging mind in this marvelous novel.

Narrate Cassandra Campbell is fully believable as she narrates this stream-of-consciousness story told in the protagonist's voice. Lizzie, a university librarian without a degree who fancies herself an amateur shrink, tries to fix the personal disasters of family, friends, and library patrons while obsessing over the doomed future of the world. She has joy in her voice as she interacts with her husband and son, who give her life balance, but as she gets more involved in trying to solve the problems of her divorced mother and her brother, a former addict who is a new father, her voice becomes more detached. As the the character becomes overwhelmed, the narrator seems to, as well. As Lizzie takes over responding to letters to her mentor's podcast, Campbell's voicings of all the characters become less distinct and more distant in tone. N.E.M. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine