Summary

The events of the story “Diary of an Interesting Year” by Helen Simpson begin in the year 2040, at the beginning of February, when the narrator’s husband, G., gives her a notebook as a birthday present. The narrator begins a diary in which she mostly focuses on surviving in a post-global-warming world.

Her diary, which begins in February, presents the narrator’s and her husband’s efforts to carry on their daily lives. They live in a world where health, proper food, and comfort are considered luxury items. Furthermore, the two of them are forced to live in a home infested with rats and struggle hard to survive day by day. G., the narrator’s husband, seems preoccupied with showing his wife that his suspicions about the government’s efforts to stop global warming were right. Much to his wife’s frustration, he keeps giving her lectures about the government’s imminent fall and rations everything they possess, from food to candles.

One of the narrator’s main focus points in the diary…