Last Things

by Jenny Offill

Grace Davitt, a young girl living with her family in a small lakeside Vermont town, is drawn ever deeper into her mother's bizarre world of obsession and myth, despite the efforts of her father, a dedicated rationalist

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Family, The United States Of America, Mental Health

263 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this beautiful, magical, heartbreaking story. The author perfectly characterized the pedestals that children elevate their parents onto only to have those pedestals crack with maturity. There were monsters here, from mythical lake monsters to the darkness of mental illness. The language was beautiful and my heart ached for the eight-year-old narrator. At the same time she scared me with her lack of empathy and sociopathic tendencies. Overall, everyone here was real, flawed, and brilliantly imaginative. I devoured every page.

[Michael Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book, told from the perspective of a quirky 8 year old girl as her parents marriage buckles and collapses under the pressure of her mother's mental illness. It's a bit of a trope at this point, but Offill uses the child's perspective brilliantly to provide a slightly warped view of proceedings. It's funny and desperately sad and filled with odd moments. Offill is a brilliant writer and it was a joy to dig back into her early work.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hope to join an upcoming Book Club discussion of Jenny Offill’s 2014 second novel “Dept of Speculation” (shortlisted for the Folio Prize); and her third novel “Weather” appeared on a number of 2020-preview lists and so made it onto the list of a number of books I pre-ordered from the library (and, where available, requested ARCs) in early January after I had entirely cleared my TBR pile over the New Year.

In preparation for reading both Offill books in early February, I thought I would finish January with this, her first novel, initially published in 2000.

The edition I read has a cover designed to look like the UK paperback cover for “Dept. of Speculation” and a back cover full of enthusiastic blurbs which sent me scurrying to read the reviews, until I realised they too were for Dept. of Speculation). So we quickly intuit this edition fits into the literary species of “books re-issued once an author gets a breakthrough following with a subsequent book”. And I have to say unfortunately into the rather-common sub-species “books that make you see why they did not make the same breakthrough impact”.

The story, interestingly for an author who spent the period between her second and third novels producing children’s books, is written in the voice of an 8 year old – a difficult trick to pull off and one I don’t think the author really manages at all.

The book is really the story of Grace’s parents disintegrating marriage as seen by Grace. Her mother Anna is an ornithologist, working in a bird sanctuary and much taken with species extinction and a with a long run view of evolution and geology – she decides to home school Grace and share her views with her, her scientific explanations mixed up with African folklore and superstition and general quirky beliefs. Her father is a private school chemistry teacher more focused on scientific rationalism.
The two main side characters are her Uncle – a children’s TV presenter (Mr Science) and Edgar (a 16 year old prodigy and babysitter, with an interest in odd philosophy and cults).

One of the key themes seems to be the different belief systems imparted to Grace by her two parents – but given her father spends his time in constitutional arguments over school prayer groups and her mother teaches her the Lord’s prayer backwards I was in the “none of the above” camp and at least felt it appropriate that Grace’s main actions seem to include stealing from school and bullying a blind neighbour.

For these criticisms there is clearly a lot of promise here – we see immediately that the author is a original writer, and particularly one able to marshal obscure facts alongside domestic drama and more existential issues. There is also a deeper theme (in this case I think extinction) which links them. All skills which I believe will come to the fore in her later novels.

For those who like me want to follow Offill’s career I would suggest that rather than the first, this be the Last Thing you read.

[Sarinys · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenny Offill in questo romanzo d’esordio (1999) scrive già benissimo. Nel suo ultimo libro Sembrava una felicità raccontava una storia distillata, asciugava più che poteva, lasciando il concentrato delle parole, intervallate da citazioni mai fuori luogo o irritanti. In Le cose che restano la scrittura è snella ma non telegrafica; costruisce i suoi crescendo di paragrafo in paragrafo, scivola con morbidezza, ma lasciando continui appigli, parabole fulminanti, piccole pietre miliari lungo tutta la narrazione. C’è un perenne senso di nostalgia e distanza, il mondo raccontato ha qualcosa di sublime ma anche di disperato. È un romanzo vibrante, pulsante vita. La prosa è perfetta, senza suonare virtuosa o artefatta, ma al contrario, risultando genuina.

I dettagli di un quotidiano brillante, i personaggi straordinari sono raccontati attraverso l’interferenza continua dell’infinito, della vita dell’universo, delle galassie, a cui s’accostano fiabe e miti. Non è un mondo magico, quello di Le cose che restano, ma un mondo intenso, più colorato del solito. Un mondo che scivola via dalla vita della bambina Grace: sua la voce narrante, ma suona tutto come un ricordo adulto dell’esperienza d’infanzia. Da questo mondo, infinitamente piccolo e grande al tempo stesso, emerge soprattutto il ritratto della madre, vera protagonista del romanzo.

Alla claustrofobia della vita familiare fa da contrappunto il calendario cosmico, disegnato sulla parete di una stanza da questa madre eccezionale ma anche opprimente. Offill restituisce attraverso i dettagli la strana alchimia del rapporto tra la bambina e la donna. Ci accorgiamo che il libro ha una trama vera e propria quando c’è una svolta, e allora capiamo il peso e la tristezza del titolo originale Last Things, le ultime cose. Ma ogni paragrafo, fin dal primo capitolo, trabocca un senso di tragedia incombente, esattamente quello che il personaggio di Grace assorbe vivendo coi suoi genitori nevrotici e geniali.

Jenny Offill sull’infanzia: «Era tutto sullo stesso piano, il Big Bang e il mostro di Loch Ness. Nell’infanzia c’è poco di sentimentale: io ricordo uno stato di selvaticità. I monaci medievali credevano che il mondo fosse un libro di cui possiamo leggere solo poche righe alla volta. Avere 8 anni significa questo» (http://bookfool.vanityfair.it/2016/05...)

Come molti romanzi di NN Editore, copertina bellissima.

[Rashmi Tiwari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is a combination of truly beautiful, lyrical writing and a really blah story. It's a bold choice to tell a story entirely from the POV of an 8-year old. While Offill pulls it off to some extent, her Grace is almost transparent when compared to her parents (which seems to be the point) but it makes the narrative drag on listlessly heading nowhere. This is confusing because Grace is also one of those overly precocious, cynical children in literature that can't possibly exist in real life so I think I expected more from her (but she's 8 so that's ridiculous). This was one of those rare books that took me a long time to get through simply because I was bored for a lot of it. Ultimately the very real problems of Grace's family and the impact they have on her weren't enough for me though I would read more by Offill since I did enjoy her writing.

[Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inventive & darkly funny tale of a childhood spent in the presence of a brilliant mother going brilliantly mad.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dear Jenny Offill,
I have now read every novel. Please write faster. I want to read you for the rest of my life.
love,
Corey

[Emily Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this after immensely enjoying Department of Speculation. Grace's mother beams the psychoanalytic id in so many of its most joyous and destructive iterations. Jenny Offill's setting of poles between mother/father, concrete/ethereality, structure/boundlessness is deeply satisfying. For one reason or another, I was left thinking of scenes from Terrence Malick's Tree of Life.

A beautiful and worthwhile book.

[Hajer Alwan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has something about it. I could hear the sound of silence properly reading it. I mean, I could hear the sound of my childhood calmness while reading this book. Every time I opened it again I went back to my childhood, not differentiating between what's in my head and reality.. I shouldn't have taken too long reading it though.. The story is okay, but the style of writing and the magic of the characters is too good. This is one of the most poetic books I've read so far.

[avrilconuve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pues corazón un poco rotito con este libro. Me esperaba algo ligero y tierno y acabé con algo muy tierno y nada ligero. Me gustó muchísimo.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dept of Speculation was one of my favorite books the year I read it. And this book is also very good. I will definitely read any books she publishes in the future. This one has a young female narrator, mother-daughter relationship, interesting facts, which are all things I like in books.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed Jenny Offill's second novel, Dept. of Speculation, and happily hunted down her debut, Last Things, which was published in 1999.  The Irish Times calls the novel a 'glorious debut', and The Times writes that 'Offill creates for Grace a mesmerising imaginary world...  She writes with a heartbreaking clarity... and is dextrously able to evoke emotional extremity through pitch-perfect narrative compression.' 

The protagonist and narrator of Last Things is Grace Davitt, who is seven years old when the novel begins, and who lives in Vermont with her parents.  She finds her volatile mother, Anna, 'a puzzling yet wonderful mystery.  This is a woman who has seen a sea serpent in the lake, who paints a timeline of the universe on the sewing-room wall, and who teaches her daughter a secret language which only they can speak.'  Her father, schoolteacher Jonathan, is an antithesis to her mother; he trusts only scientific evidence, and 'finds himself shut out by Anna as she draws Grace deeper and deeper into a strange world of myth and obsession.'

Offill captures her young protagonist's voice wonderfully and believably.  She weaves in childish fantasies of Grace's, which are rather lovely at times: 'I closed my eyes and tried to dream in another language', for instance.  From its opening pages, the novel is an incredibly thoughtful one.  Grace imparts: 'Another time, my mother told me that when I was born every language in the world was in my head, waiting to take form.  I could have spoken Swahili or Urdu or Cantonese, but now it was too late.'  Throughout, and with the guidance of both her parents, Grace is trying to make sense of the world around her.  This is made more difficult, as her parents tend to disagree about everything.

Grace's mother is bound up in stories which she fashions both for her daughter, and for herself.  These stories confuse Grace, and serve only to muddle the truth for her: 'Sometimes I tried to guess which of my mother's stories were true and which were not, but I was usually wrong.'  Anna takes Grace to a nearby lake each morning, before anyone else arrives, in order to try and catch a glimpse of a monster which she is convinced lives there.  She has some rather peculiar notions about the world, and how one should behave.  'Sometimes,' Grace tells us, 'my mother tired of looking for the monster and we'd go to the park instead.  The rule about the park was that we could only go there if we went in disguise.  Otherwise, men might stop and talk to us.'

All of the characters in Last Things have unusual quirks.  Grace's babysitter, sixteen-year-old Edgar, is a science prodigy, who answers questions only if he is interested in the answer.  One morning, he imparts a dream of his, in which 'one day entire cities might be illuminated by mold.'  Of her cousin, Grace states: 'Grooming was important to Mary because she believed her portrait would one day appear on a dollar bill.  The summer before, she had sent away in the mail for a kit to start her own country.  Martyrdom, it was going to be called.  It wasn't ready yet because there was a lot of paperwork to do, she said.'  Her father carries around a book entitled Know Your Constitution!, which he uses to write letters to the newspaper.

The family dynamic which Offill presents is fascinating.  Offill probes the decisions which Grace's parents have made, and the sometimes amusing effects which they have had on their only child: 'I had never been to church because my father had vowed to raise me a heathen.  A heathen was a godless thing, my mother explained.  In some parts of America, it was against the law to be one.  On Sundays, I watched from the woods as the Christians drove by.  The women had on dresses and the men wore dark suits.  Sometimes I threw rocks at their cars and waited to see what God would do.  Nothing much, it turned out.'

I rarely see reviews of Offill's work, which I feel is a real shame.  I can only hope the this review has piqued someone's interest in this novel, or her more popular Dept. of Speculation.  This novel is funny, and whilst at times it appears lighthearted, there is a darker undercurrent to it.  The characters are realistic creations, and will stay in your head for weeks afterwards.  Particularly for a debut, Last Things is accomplished, and has such a surety about it.

[hadashi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sort of coming-of-age story, but of who? the child or the parents? Since the narrator is eight, and tells things very openly, guilelessly (as kids can do) – even terrible things like locking a blind girl in a doghouse as a trick – there is a sense of having to question everything you’re told. The father teaches his daughter pure fact; the mother teaches her things like how there is a Loch Ness type monster in the lake near their house or that Grace’s fascination with everything in a book called the Encyclopedia of the Unexplained is totally fine. It’s an unlikely marriage, an unlikely childhood (very wacked-out socialization and education), and full of unlikely characters and events that come to a fairly unsatisfactory conclusion.

[Ophelinha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last things doesn't possess the brutal honesty, the heartbreaking quality of Dept of Speculation, but it possesses a weird charm, a nostalgic enchantment. 8 year old Grace shares her childhood, split between a beguiling, off the rails mother and a stiff, somewhat distant but all the same loving father. Grace and her mum's - Anna- relationship is a seesaw: it can reach great heights, but it cannot avoid the heartbreaking fall of the frailest of the two.

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro delicatissimo, quasi una fiaba, sul difficile rapporto tra madre e figlia, sul potere che i genitori hanno sullo sviluppo emotivo e caratteriale dei figli, nel bene e nel male. Un libro sull'amore, sulle mancanze, sugli errori...
Un libro bello che parla alla sensibilità del lettore.

Le cose che restano
Jenny Offill
Traduzione: Gioia Guerzoni
Editore: NNEditore
Pag: 235
Voto: 4/5

[Lia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the wild, imaginative way Anna “makes sense of,” explains, phenomena in the world. At first I thought she’s being silly because she’s interacting with a young child; but then I started wondering if it’s a fantasy story, but then gradually I realize this is the story about a woman turning mad, told through her young daughter who was brought up to believe in fantastic, mysterious, mythical things.

So it’s a story about a child grappling with grief and the suicide of her mentally ill mother — but even as it turns dark, there’s lightness to it, the child’s way of making sense of things is still really creative, imaginative, cute, funny even, and yes, sometimes a little dark.

I adore how she originally thought the dog was her mother in new skin, imaginably as a way to cope with her grief. Through a wild turn of “reasoning,” she suddenly knows for sure that the dog is not her mother after all, she really is gone. Despite her childish inability to comprehend mortality, she’s still dealing with the loss, she’s evading it in some fashion, but also coming around to face it honestly.

I’m not sure what the last chapter is supposed to represent — that lost hour, rationally speaking it’s just a child’s confusion about the concept time zone made even more mysterious by her madly creative mother — that hour was some how “lost” but then, impossibly, “found”. In that recovered hour, she enters the lake with her mother, turning it into a murder-suicide.

What is that supposed to represent? One iteration of the eternal recurrence? Chance? That it could have been otherwise?

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jenny Offill’s Last Things is a novel of ideas. Its immersion into the world of an eight-year-old child whose parents’ marriage — indeed her mother’s sanity — is unraveling leaves the reader with one question: Who is to blame for Grace’s confusion? The brilliant mother, Anna, an ornithologist who speaks five language, who home-schools her daughter into a world that mixes fact with fancy? Or the father, Jonathan, a private school chemistry teacher given the boot, who runs off to become television’s Mr. Science and leaves Grace in her mother’s unsteady care?

But no, Last Things is not a “who done it.” It moves beyond an expose of the effects of bad parenting on a sensitive child. In telling the story from Grace’s perspective, the novel raises the question of whether the gap between what’s important and what’s trivial is really all that significant. By recounting all that occurs from the same plane, Offill achieves a kind of re-visioning of how the mind works, how the eye sees.

Grace can report on the dialogue and actions without telling us what things mean. She record how her mother played tricks on her father: first hiding her wedding ring in a drawer to see if he noticed, then freezing it in an ice cube and serving it to him in a drink.

His reaction? “Don’t you realize I could have choked to death?” The reader sees an underlying message: “Notice me!”

Grace simply moves from that incident to a story her mother tells her about a city made entirely of diamonds in Africa called City of Death. Diamonds were “always dangerous,” her mother tells her.

Can an eight-year-old child be clinically depressed? Studies have shown that depressed people tend to see things more clearly. I would argue that Grace sees things clearly.

Last Things starts out reading like a bedtime story before it turns horrific. What a marvelous place the world is! There is so much to discover. Filled with inventive illustration, Anna divides a billion years of geological time into 24 days of real time to explain evolution to Grace; she takes her to a football field and using right-size objects, distances planets from the sun to explain the solar system.

Grace is no angel. She gets others into trouble, calling 911 on her neighbors when she thinks the boy across the street has died. She spies on and is dangerously jealous of a little blind girl who lives nearby. Yet, she is resourceful. As her mother’s imagination spins out of control, Grace’s narrative moves from whimsical to sinister. Having nothing but a slip of paper with a telephone number on it to anchor her to reality, she hangs on.

Offills wrote Last Things in 1999. It was reissued in paperback in 2015, following the success of her second novel Department of Speculation (2014). Each book is uniquely brilliant in its own way. I look forward to whenever this writer of experimental fiction open another window onto the human psyche.

[Darling Farthing · Rating 3 out of 5]

TFW your mom is abusive but she is also your mom and you are a child and moms are all you have and will always be all you have and so you go along with her bullshit and let her lie trick shame and torture you but she is your mom and she is beautiful and bold and brilliant all the same and because of that you are loyal to her and cannot imagine anything else

Also the father was just 100% right for me like all the way so the blurb is misleading ... and they just kept focusing on the mother? It’s a mommy issues novel.

Not super remarkable though that scene with the blind kid at the end was very disturbing in a good way.

[Lacey Louwagie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a haunting story of a woman's descent into madness, told through the eyes of her eight-year-old daughter. It's painful to watch the way she pulls away from her husband, who seems to be a good, loving man, and who is her best link to reality--taking her daughter with her. Still, it's easy to see how he originally became captivated by her imagination, spirit, whims, conviction, and even volatility, as she weaves a similar spell around her daughter, the reader, and even the teenage next-door neighbor who is in love with her. The choice of a child narrator provides a certain level of distance from the events that unfold because of her lack of understanding, and one is left wondering how much of what the mother believes is really "true." The writing is beautiful and the story held my interest throughout, even though it took me a while to figure out exactly what the story was about. I do wish more questions had been answered -- I wanted to know specifically what mental health issues Grace's mother suffered from -- but her narration kept this shrouded in mystery. The ending is not altogether satisfying, but then, this is the kind of book that cannot easily resolve itself, and the unsettled feeling it leaves in its wake seems fitting for the subject matter.

[Federico Tommasi Zardini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo stile di Offill è davvero alla portata di tutti e non può non sfiorare certi ricordi e sensazioni nella vita delle persone, passando dal particolare all'universale quindi da racconto della scrittrice a esperienza condivisa dai lettori.

Ho amato molto le caratterizzazioni dei personaggi, molto attente, veritiere e sfaccettate.

Non saprei indicare alcun difetto, sento solo un senso di insipidità generale che non è in grado di colpirmi, di cambiarmi o di farmi riflettere. Per questo motivo mi rendo conto che si tratta di un giudizio molto soggettivo, sicuramente questo è un libro che può valere tranquillamente quattro stelle o addirittura cinque quando fa centro nelle persone.

[Blair · Rating 2 out of 5]

So disappointing. I absolutely loved Dept. of Speculation and jumped at the chance to read this (I got a free copy from my favorite bookstore). It didn't engage me in the same way. I spent most of my time confused, I didn't like any of the characters enough to care what happened to them or root for them in any way, and I didn't walk away with anything (messages, insights, a feeling of being entertained). I expected so much more, and maybe that was part of my problem. If you need to choose one of her novels though, go with Dept. of Speculation. Last Things may just disappoint.

[Ffiamma · Rating 3 out of 5]

una bambina e i suoi genitori, diversissimi tra loro. una madre fantasiosa e destabilizzante, un padre razionale, un equilibrio precario tra ordine e caos che, inevitabilmente, si sbriciolerà e allora la difficoltà maggiore non è essere padre o madre ma figlia. e io, lettore, ho oscillato tra ammirazione e rabbia, tra l'utopia di una educazione non convenzionale, che stimola e plasma sogni, e l'irritazione per i danni che gli eccessi possono creare. romanzo breve e intenso, che affronta un tema non semplice in maniera non scontata né melensa. interessante e molto triste.

[peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this but I’m a sucker for the childlike wonder narrative style so maybe I’m biased

[David Rush · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book at 2nd Ed. Books in the Raleigh Airport. I thought it was cool there was a used book store in an airport so I kind of wanted to buy something. So I just looked at covers an blurbs and bought this without checking any Goodreads or Amazon reviews. I had never heard of the author Jenny Offill.

I read about half of it on the plane slowly finished it off after getting home.

I offer all of that as a way to explain how I ended up reading this book. I like it, but dang it is an odd thing.

The book is told by the young daughter Grace and is the story of her somewhat cruel and self-centered family with her mother, Anna, growing more and more mentally unbalanced. I guess the father, Jonathan loves his daughter in that he not overtly mean like her mom. But Anna’s unpredictability seems to endear her to Grace, so go figure, maybe that is a thing young kids do.

Grace’s telling of her tale often has an unreal quality, so the stories sound like she telling you about her dreams. And in fact dream analysis figures in the novel itself and Grace looks up the meaning of dreams in a book she has.

I guess her mother is supposed to be some symbol of mystical or non-scientific exuberance and the father is the literally minded scientist. But they are both kind of jerks.

So it is well written, engaging, interesting but for the most part it is people being mean to each other. The only bit of true kindness I remember is Grace with her dog when she apologizes for throwing a rock into the lake and the dog tries to fetch it.

. . . . . .

I just now read some more reviews and fortunately somebody posted this quote from the book

"'My mother said that stones were last things and would be around long after people were gone. Other last things were oceans, metal and crows. 'I thought that if I filled a birdbath with seawater and dropped a coin in it, I might glimpse the end of the world.''"

So I guess there is something relevant about the stone Grace threw for the dog to fetch...yeah there were stones all through this book.

I'll have to think about it some more.

[Raquel B. R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Las cosas del fin del mundo”, novela debut de la norteamericana Jenny Offill, trata de todo aquello que tambalea nuestros cimientos, lo que nos hace ser quienes somos, a lo que os aferramos pensando que será eterno y que resulta tan efímero como un relato, como la infancia, como la misma vida.

Porque aunque suene tan catastrófico, al final ¿qué es el fin del mundo más que nuestro apocalipsis particular? Quizá las cosas del fin del mundo son aquellas que nos llevan a destruir precisamente eso, nuestro propio mundo, nuestro yo interior, la esencia de lo que somos. Quizá las cosas del fin del mundo no son más que nosotros mismos, o tal vez son nuestro legado.

Narrada desde la perspectiva de la infancia, nos encontramos ante una novela ágil, de lo más inmersiva, curiosa y original, dinámica. Un relato peculiar con tintes de comedia que cuenta los devenires de una familia muy particular, pero cuyo humor encierra temas de lo más trascendentales, como puede ser la repercusión de ciertos problemas de salud mental en la persona que los sufre y en quienes la rodean.

Una historia que despierta ternura, incredulidad, sorpresa; un relato en el que se siente cierto desaliento, cierta desesperanza, pero que también deja un pequeño reguero de optimismo.

Una historia en la que destaca también la magia de las historias, de la narrativa, de los cuentos y leyendas que no solo conforman nuestro imaginario, sino que nos ayudan a conocer y analizar el mundo, y también las cosas que abocan a su final.

Sorprendente, curiosa, adictiva y muy recomendable.

#literaturaestadounidense #yoleoautorasoct #yoleoautoras #descubriendoautoras

[Francesca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5-4/5

Romanzo d’esordio di Jenny Offill, Le cose che restano (Last things) è arrivato da noi solo lo scorso anno.

Sono rimasta davvero stupita da questo romanzo, che inizialmente sembra una semplice storia abbastanza curiosa dell’infanzia di Grace, invece diventa qualcosa di molto più coinvolgente, profondo, commovente, un continuo innestarsi di realtà e immaginazione sotto cui sta una verità toccante, cruda, triste.

Leggi la recensione

[Melissa McGowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent story. It's not easy to transport the adult reader to a child's perspective, but this book did that for me. I could also identify in some measure with the tragic mother and that was a bit unnerving. Jenny Offill's prose carries me along like a canoe ride without a lot of paddling. Loved it.

[Rebecca Schwarz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply dysfunctional parents painted as quirky characters with an 8-year-old protagonist navigating a world of secrets, neglect, and mental illness. For some reason, I've recently encountered this particular trope so much that I'm just weary and annoyed by it.

[D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Last Things in two days, actually lost sleep so I wouldn't have to put it down. Awesome first novel for Offill.

[David Simonetti · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know why I read this. It was easy to read, but I found the plot nothing to write home about. I wouldn't waste my time on this.