Jenny Offill is an American author born in Massachusetts. Her first novel Last Things was published in 1999 was a New York Times Notable book and a finalist for the L.A Times First Book Award.
She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books She teaches in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Columbia University and Queens University.
Old Crimes (2024) Jill McCorkle "A splendid, wide-ranging collection that once again proves McCorkle is a master of the form."
Last Acts (2024) Alexander Sammartino "It's hard to believe Last Acts is a first novel. Sammartino's brilliance and originality shine out from every page of this masterful debut."
Two Nurses, Smoking (2022) David Means "David Means's new stories are filled with sly wit and quiet brilliance. I left them feeling as if I'd traveled across vast territories of longing and loss led by an expert guide."
Denial (2022) Jon Raymond "I haven't read anything like this before. Jon Raymond has taken climate fiction in a new and exciting direction. In this post-apocalyptic world, the apocalypse itself has receded and the strange, maddening work of climate reparations has begun. This exhilarating novel is as fast-paced as a thriller, but the mystery at the heart of it is not who committed the crime but how to live in its eerie aftermath."
Neruda on the Park (2022) Cleyvis Natera "Natera is a writer to watch. Her excellent debut novel is lyrical, absorbing, and slyly funny."
Benefit (2022) Siobhan Phillips "A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it."
The Apartment on Calle Uruguay (2022) Zachary Lazar "A politically deft and emotionally devastating exploration of what it means to live in exile. With great lyricism and sly wit, Lazar illuminates the many varieties of longing for home."
The New Adventures of Helen (2021) Ludmilla Petrushevskaya "Petrushevskaya's fiction [offers] a glimpse of what it means to be a human being, living sometimes in bitter misery, sometimes in unexpected grace."
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness (2021) Claire Vaye Watkins "There's some kind of genius sorcery in this novel. It's startlingly original, hilarious and harrowing by turns, finally transcendent. Watkins writes like an avenging angel. It's thrilling and terrifying to stand in her wake."
Friends & Dark Shapes (2021) Kavita Bedford "Astonishingly assured and full of razor sharp observations about what it means to live precariously in a changing city. It’s hard to believe this is Bedford’s first novel."
The Fourth Child (2021) Jessica Winter "A beautifully observed and thrilling honest novel about the dark corners of family life and the long complicated search for understanding and grace."
Shelter in Place (2020) David Leavitt "A wickedly funny and emotionally expansive novel about all the bewildering ways we seek solace from the people and things that surround us."
Leave the World Behind (2020) Rumaan Alam "Leave The World Behind is that rarest of things, a beautifully written, emotionally resonant page-turner. Alam explores complex ideas about privilege and fate with miraculous wit and grace."
Want (2020) Lynn Steger Strong "A deeply intelligent and sneakily moving novel about having the ground fall away beneath your feet. Strong ingeniously undercuts conventional wisdom about what it means to be a success in this world."
Lake Life (2020) David James Poissant "Lake Like is a lyrically inventive and emotionally generous novel. Poissant is a gifted chronicler of the fault lines that lie just below family life."
Nine Shiny Objects (2020) Brian Castleberry "In this extraordinary novel, Castleberry brilliantly hopscotches from person to person, from era to era, while somehow making all this fancy footwork look effortless and essential."
The Lightness (2020) Emily Temple "Funny, whip-smart and transcendently wise about friendship, family, lust and love."
Same Same (2019) Peter Mendelsund "A deeply inventive and wonderfully strange novel that takes dead aim at the question: does it matter if something's real?"
The Incendiaries (2018) R O Kwon "An impressive, assured debut about the hope for personal and political revolution and all the unexpected ways it flickers out. Kwon has vital things to say about the fraught times we live in."
All the Dirty Parts (2017) Daniel Handler "Take one sex-crazed teenage boy and take him seriously. Don't make him the butt of an easy joke. Don't make him the star of a humiliation comedy. Let him be an idiot, a jerk, a cad, a hero. Make his desire into a rocket shooting him out of this too small life. Show his loneliness crash-landing him into pieces. It's almost impossible to write tenderly and truthfully about such things. Somehow Handler has done it."
More recommendations
Award nominations
2020 Women's Prize For Fiction (nominee) : Weather
