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A review by danlfonseca
Last Things by Jenny Offill
4.0
I picked this one up right after reading (and loving) Offill’s most recent novel, Weather. There was something about her writing style in that book which just fascinated me. Last Things, by comparison, is much more conventional in form – but it is still very far from simplistic. Offill’s best asset is the way she is able to create several layers in her books: in Last Things, by writing in an eight-year-old’s perspective, the author manages to hide most of the adult action and reflection behind a curtain of childlike misunderstanding. The reader is left trying to put the pieces of a puzzle that continually get lost.
Because this novel is not only interested in the titular last things – Eschatology, the theological study of the “end things”, those that pertain to the Christian end of life and of the world – but also in lost things (an approximate opposite, which is close in spelling but very different in meaning). This becomes very significant as we follow Grace Davitt and her growing relationship with both of her parents (her pragmatic dad and imaginative mother). As her image and idea of both crumble, Grace is left trying to figure out the exact moment when she lost her mother, the stolen hour in which she mysteriously disappeared.
In a larger scope, this novel deals with extinction, and the loss of nature and natural beings, and the eventual human demise. As she so masterfully did in Weather, Offill relates the general idea of extinction to the personal idea of death – and with this creates in Anna, Grace’s mother, a fatal unease that comes from the not knowing. She sees herself turning to religion in an attempt to comfort her doubts, but by then it is too late. There is a lot of conflict between science and religion, and between skepticism and superstition. I love how Offill works with science in her books, and the emotional traps into which it can lead you.
So, in sum, this is a novel about the mental fraying of a woman who realizes that nothing is meant to last, the proud egoism of a man who cannot admit that his hard-headed non-belief may be as dangerous as blind faith, and the inevitable falling apart of a family that results. And also, about trying to understand all that and to see what is left in the end. A very clever and well written debut.
Because this novel is not only interested in the titular last things – Eschatology, the theological study of the “end things”, those that pertain to the Christian end of life and of the world – but also in lost things (an approximate opposite, which is close in spelling but very different in meaning). This becomes very significant as we follow Grace Davitt and her growing relationship with both of her parents (her pragmatic dad and imaginative mother). As her image and idea of both crumble, Grace is left trying to figure out the exact moment when she lost her mother, the stolen hour in which she mysteriously disappeared.
In a larger scope, this novel deals with extinction, and the loss of nature and natural beings, and the eventual human demise. As she so masterfully did in Weather, Offill relates the general idea of extinction to the personal idea of death – and with this creates in Anna, Grace’s mother, a fatal unease that comes from the not knowing. She sees herself turning to religion in an attempt to comfort her doubts, but by then it is too late. There is a lot of conflict between science and religion, and between skepticism and superstition. I love how Offill works with science in her books, and the emotional traps into which it can lead you.
So, in sum, this is a novel about the mental fraying of a woman who realizes that nothing is meant to last, the proud egoism of a man who cannot admit that his hard-headed non-belief may be as dangerous as blind faith, and the inevitable falling apart of a family that results. And also, about trying to understand all that and to see what is left in the end. A very clever and well written debut.