“A dazzling kaleidoscope of natural and personal history crackling with intelligence . . . Lorraine Boissoneault is a force of nature.”—Sarah McColl, author of Joy Enough
Winner of the 2024 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award
Science writer Lorraine Boissoneault has been in pain for most of her adult life. Unable to control or make sense of her chronic illness diagnoses, she began describing the ebb and flow of her symptoms as “body weather.” At first an imaginative approach to coping with flare-ups, the phrase has become a waypoint in Lorraine’s explorations of the intimate relationship between our fragile bodies and the world around us.
Visceral and poetic, these braided essays traverse science, history, and memoir to explore the interconnected relationships between the human body and Earth’s meteorology—2 chaotic systems that inform every cell of our beings. Boissoneault surveys her own “body weather,” relating her dysregulated thyroid to global temperature fluctuations; her arrhythmic heart to chaotic thunderstorms; her inflamed joints to wildfires beyond control.
Body Weather is a lyrical exploration that reimagines the cloudy stages of grief and challenges us to reexamine universal questions lodged deep within: how do we find comfort and meaning in a fevered world?
“Body Weather is an astonishment—a dazzling kaleidoscope of natural and personal history crackling with intelligence. Lorraine Boissoneault’s expansive vision presents both the awesome wonders and delicate frailties of nature, from the cosmos to the tender, tenacious heart. Oceanic in scope and breathtaking as a lightning storm, Body Weather vibrates with the pain and rage of living in a female body on a sick planet. Lorraine Boissoneault is a force of nature.”
—Sarah McColl, author of Joy Enough
“I’m amazed at how seamlessly Lorraine Boissoneault dances between the physiological and geological, between the personal and universal, between grief and hope. From grand sweeps of scientific history to poignant slices of memoir, Body Weather connects the challenges of the planet to the trials of the body and dares to imagine a future where we address both with humanity. It’s a singular, stunning book.”
—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of An Immense World