RaveThe Sydney Morning Herald (AUS)It’s no simple matter to write about life at the end of the world but that is what American writer Jenny Offill attempts in her latest novel, Weather, a document of life on the climate frontier ... At just on 200 pages, Offill has carved her novel more with scalpel than pen ... There are silences. Offill doesn’t lay out easy paths to follow. In the absence of any real narrative arc, the reader must draw understanding from inferences, make connections out of fragments ... Weather is told in the present tense, from Lizzie’s first-person point of view. While there are snippets of dialogue, we mostly hear Lizzie’s interior voice, a loop that feels like a continuous present – akin to an endless scrolling through a social-media feed of acute aphorisms ... To say that Weather is zeitgeisty would be a grotesque understatement. Reading it in a year that opened with devastating bushfires, then blossomed into a global COVID-19 pandemic is queerly uncanny.
Sarah Moss
RaveThe Sydney Morning HeraldIn just under 150 pages, Moss covers complex terrain—domestic violence, class and gender inequality, and nationalism—with the focus and intensity of a portrait miniaturist ... this novel is a gear shift away from straight literary realism. It is also more strongly plot-driven than Moss\' earlier novels. While it hurtles towards a terrible conclusion, there is no hint of gaudiness in Moss\' writing. It is taut, subtle and always in control ... Moss blurs the lines between past and present until finally, the creeping dread of the story crescendos towards an almost unbearable act. Ghost Wall examines power and consent. By drawing a parallel between Iron Age ritual sacrifice and present-day domestic violence, Moss eviscerates the societal permission given to men to exert control over women. In this devastating exploration of how we live, Moss has written a novel likely to move her from awards shortlists and into the literary spotlight.
