There's such an appealing idea behind this book: that a librarian takes on a part-time job answering letters from people of all ends of the political spectrum who are worried about climate. I read that blurb and thought "Sold!"... but what the blurb describes is a very, very small part of the book. It's such a small part that the blurb comes across as honestly a little bit deceptive. 

Instead, Lizzie the librarian produces an almost stream of consciousness of mild fretting that mashes up anxieties about climate change against the recent (at time of publishing) election of Donald Trump. Lizzie muddles along with the idea of doomsday prepping, and she muddles along trying to prop up her struggling brother and muddles along in her mostly contented marriage. She just muddles, basically, wandering from one point and one incipient crisis to the next, constantly petering out, and if this book suffers from anything other than that deceptive blurb it suffers from its rather amorphous shape, a lack of focus - deliberately constructed, I'm sure - that doesn't do much to really grab me as a reader.

I don't want to say that the book's not well-written, because it is. Despite that very unfocused structure, the prose is very effective. I don't want to say that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. I just feel as if I didn't get the book I was promised, and - likeable as the actual book is - I still find myself, on completion, feeling a little disappointed at what could have been.