Weather

Short list Ed for the womens Prize for fiction 2020 This is so good. We are not ready nor worthy Ocean vuong what are you afraid of he asks me and the answer of course is dentistry humiliation scarcity then he says what are your most useful skills? People think Im funny Br>lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practise her other calling: as an unofficial shrink. For years she has supported her god-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment but then her old mentor Sylvia killer makes a proposal. Sylvia has become famous for her prescient podcast hell and high water and wants to hire br>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 she dives into this polarized world she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once youve seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse br>Lizzie is forced to acknowledge the limits of what she can do. But if she cant save others then what or who might save her? And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in-funnyy disturbing and increasingly mad.