PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary, analysis and review of the book and not the original book. Jenny Offill's third novel follows the thoughts of librian Lizzie Benson as she deals with raising a family, helping her brother overcome addiction, and preparing for the end of the world. In Offill's signature style of disjointed autofiction, she takes the reader on a journey through the mind of a woman obsessed with doomsday preparation in a world ever threatened...

"Book-smart, devoutly Catholic, and painfully unsure of herself, Jane becomes pregnant in high school; by her early twenties, she is raising three children in the suburbs of western New York State. In the fall of 1991, as her children are growing older and more independent, Jane is overcome by a spiritual and intellectual restlessness that leads her to become involved with a local pro-life group. Following the tenets of her beliefs, she also adopts...

"Our nameless narrator stubbornly tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive and safe over the course of one savage winter in Minnesota. Woefully unprepared for the task, she battles the relentless predators, severe weather and unforeseen bad luck--all the while grieving a recent miscarriage, and coming to terms with her infertility and the accompanying uncertainty that her future holds. Intimate and startlingly original, this slender novel...

"By the author of the award-winning To Be a Machine, a deeply considered look at the people and places in confrontation with the end of our days. We're alive in a time of worst-case scenarios: The weather has gone uncanny, volatile. Our old post-war alliances are crumbling. Everywhere you look there's an omen, a joke whose punchline is the end of the world. How are we to live in the shadow of such a grim future? What does the world hold for our children?...

Some of us understand place in terms of family and community, landscape, or even the weather. For others, the idea of place becomes more distinct and particular: the sound of someone humming while washing dishes, the musical cadence of a mountain accent, the smell of a tobacco field under the hot Piedmont sun. Some of North Carolina's finest writers ruminate on the meaning of place in this collection of twenty-one original essays, untangling North...