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The Avian Hourglass
At once an ode to birds, an elegy to space, and a journey into the most haunted and uncanny corners of the human mind, The Avian Hourglass showcases Lindsey Drager’s signature brilliance in a stunning, surrealist novel for fans of Jesse Ball, Helen Oyeyemi, Yoko Ogawa, and Shirley Jackson
The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of becoming a radio astronomer struggles to raise the triplets she gave birth to as a gestational surrogate, whose parents were killed in a car accident. Surrounded by characters who wear wings, memorize etymologies, and build gigantic bird nests, and bound to this town in which young adults must decide between two binary worldviews—either YES or NO—the woman is haunted by the old fable of the Girl in Glass Vessel, a cautionary tale about prying back the façade of one’s world.
When events begin to unfold that suggest a local legend about the town being the whole of the universe might be true, the woman finds her understanding of her own life–and her reality–slipping through her fingers.
A reflection on the intersecting crises of mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the exponentially growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass culminates in a figurative and literal twist that asks readers to reframe how they conceive of a series of concentric understandings of home: the globe, one’s country, one’s town, one’s family, and one’s own body.
The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of becoming a radio astronomer struggles to raise the triplets she gave birth to as a gestational surrogate, whose parents were killed in a car accident. Surrounded by characters who wear wings, memorize etymologies, and build gigantic bird nests, and bound to this town in which young adults must decide between two binary worldviews—either YES or NO—the woman is haunted by the old fable of the Girl in Glass Vessel, a cautionary tale about prying back the façade of one’s world.
When events begin to unfold that suggest a local legend about the town being the whole of the universe might be true, the woman finds her understanding of her own life–and her reality–slipping through her fingers.
A reflection on the intersecting crises of mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the exponentially growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass culminates in a figurative and literal twist that asks readers to reframe how they conceive of a series of concentric understandings of home: the globe, one’s country, one’s town, one’s family, and one’s own body.
212 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 2024
10 people are currently reading
633 people want to read
About the author
Lindsey Drager
6 books105 followersHer experimental novels have won a John Gardner Fiction Prize and a Shirley Jackson Award; been listed as a “Best Book of the Year” in The Guardian and NPR; and twice been named a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
Her work has received support from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Study, the I-Park Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. The recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose, she is currently at work on two speculative multimedia projects.
Her work has received support from the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Study, the I-Park Foundation, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. The recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Prose, she is currently at work on two speculative multimedia projects.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
October 9, 2024
"Avian Hourglass' is a genuinely astonishing book. Remarkable in its originally, execution, depth, and meaning, I can't stop thinking about it. Set in a small, unidentified town where people confront a world without birds or stars as an unnamed crisis looms. I am rarely drawn so completely into a world that seems on one level bereft of hope, yet on another, finding a fiercer hope in the flawed interactions among a small group of people clinging to long-established intimate relationships held together by mutual support and comfort. I've read (and written) CliFi literature, but this is a masterpiece. Please. Everyone on the planet, please pick up this book and read it--both the YES people and the NO people and especially the MAYBE people (you'll need to read the book to get the context for this last comment!). One of the most beautiful books I've ever read.
March 27, 2025
The ghost of birds...
August 13, 2024
"Don't you think it's funny...that in a world that relies so much on circles and cycles and orbits, time is a line?"
In the chaos of the modern world it can feel like something's a little off. Is it a feeling everyone who has ever existed has had? Or are we attaching it to relatively recent events both personal and globally? A pandemic, an election, the internet, predictive technology, the sheer amount of death, illness, and suffering... this weighty feeling, the one that I sometimes have late at night when I stare into the darkness and am thinking *a little too much* about the meaning of existence, reverberates throughout THE AVIAN HOURGLASS.
The unnamed narrator’s world consists of a small town, a few dear friends, a dead father, three children, the bus route she drives for work, her ambition to be a radio astronomer, and the fact that all the birds in the world have disappeared. Giant human-sized and (historically) accurate bird nests start appearing around town, and so does her long lost love, a woman she refers to as The Only Person I’ve Ever Loved. The narrator seems to feel these known entities circling around her, weaving something unknown to her consciousness, and she grasps for meaning in her day to day life.
There is so much care in this book—while reading it it feels like a veil of sadness hovering in the unknown, but it's mostly about love. Maybe it's like an egg, as the narrator surmises at one point: "Love must be like the white of an egg wrapped around a yolk made of grief. Then I remember there aren't birds anymore." The narrator’s solitude seems nestled under layers of her surroundings; it felt like something I was trying to uncover.
If you ever want to divulge in someone else’s feeling of uneasiness within the world rather than ferment in your own, you may like this. I was completely enchanted by this novel from start to finish. THE AVIAN HOURGLASS philosophizes in a way that will compel you into deep thought, regard the world in wonder, and it makes a stirring argument for hope.
In the chaos of the modern world it can feel like something's a little off. Is it a feeling everyone who has ever existed has had? Or are we attaching it to relatively recent events both personal and globally? A pandemic, an election, the internet, predictive technology, the sheer amount of death, illness, and suffering... this weighty feeling, the one that I sometimes have late at night when I stare into the darkness and am thinking *a little too much* about the meaning of existence, reverberates throughout THE AVIAN HOURGLASS.
The unnamed narrator’s world consists of a small town, a few dear friends, a dead father, three children, the bus route she drives for work, her ambition to be a radio astronomer, and the fact that all the birds in the world have disappeared. Giant human-sized and (historically) accurate bird nests start appearing around town, and so does her long lost love, a woman she refers to as The Only Person I’ve Ever Loved. The narrator seems to feel these known entities circling around her, weaving something unknown to her consciousness, and she grasps for meaning in her day to day life.
There is so much care in this book—while reading it it feels like a veil of sadness hovering in the unknown, but it's mostly about love. Maybe it's like an egg, as the narrator surmises at one point: "Love must be like the white of an egg wrapped around a yolk made of grief. Then I remember there aren't birds anymore." The narrator’s solitude seems nestled under layers of her surroundings; it felt like something I was trying to uncover.
If you ever want to divulge in someone else’s feeling of uneasiness within the world rather than ferment in your own, you may like this. I was completely enchanted by this novel from start to finish. THE AVIAN HOURGLASS philosophizes in a way that will compel you into deep thought, regard the world in wonder, and it makes a stirring argument for hope.
March 16, 2025
A wonderful, thoughtful, and unique book, which looks at the climate crises and our increasingly detached connections in terms of individual meaning and purpose. The unnamed city where it takes place is like a pocket universe, its past, present and future a mystery. The narrator and the few named characters she interacts with are like characters in a play trying to discern their purpose as they move around on a set that’s meant to represents something larger. It felt like the existentialism of the 20th century meeting the climate fiction of the 21st, which I am completely on board with.
May 20, 2024
Our main character in The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager is a striving radio astronomer living in an unspecified future. This is a future where birds are extinct, you can no longer see stars from the surface of the earth and driverless buses are on the verge of replacing human ones.
A surrogate mother to triplets, she became their primary carer after the sudden death of their biological parents in an accident. Doing her best to raise the triplets despite lacking a guiding maternal instinct, I enjoyed her perspective:
"It's a bit unsettling, but children as a rule are unsettling, so I find a way to be both unsettled and also proud." Page 15
Also unsettling is the distant future the author creates, remarking early on:
"I believe when we reached the end of birds - birds, whose genetic code outlived dinosaurs - people realized we were at the precipice of a whole new paradigm of being." Page 27
Gosh I hope I never see that day. Taking place during this unspecified future is The Crisis, which isn't named or described but which divides the population in their isolated settlement into Yes/No camps. Our protagonist is undecided and the reader can readily substitute their own cause or crisis in order to relate to the narrative:
"I have a thought that perhaps we have mistakenly identified as sides what are in fact two responses to the same threat and if only we really sat down and talked about it, maybe cried about it, perhaps made art about it, we would come to realize this fact." Page 27
The Crisis and what it might symbolise is left to the individual reader, yet my perspective shifted from climate change to religion and our protagonist soon realises there could be more than one crisis. Ain't that the truth!
What is clear is our protagonist's love of stars and the night sky and her dream to become an astronomer. As the protagonist studies for the admittance test, there's plenty of space content. This has earned the phrase 'an elegy of space' in the blurb but let's hear from the woman herself:
"I will be a radio astronomer because I want it so much that the blood inside me aches. If you want something enough, in this world, in this town, I believe that you can get it. It's about hard work and real want. It's about never giving up." Page 39
Inspiring stuff! Just as our author is exploring on the page what life might be like in the future (no birds, no stars), our main character does so too. And while considering her three children could live beyond the end of this millennium, the reader is still not clear on when in time this novel is set.
"I would not understand who it was staring back at me and the fact of me being made of skin and bone and blood on a planet that rotates around a sun and in a world where most things crawl but some swim and billowing vapor lives overhead and there is divorce and soda and we move around in vehicles fuelled by liquified dinosaur and there are picnics but there is also murder, and chocolate but also hate." Pages 99-100
Reading The Avian Hourglass is an ethereal experience and I frequently found myself visualising the text, pausing to daydream or consider a description. This lead to a drifting attention and typically this signifies a lack of engagement but I wonder if that's what Drager intended.
The author seems to paint her worlds with wisps and suggestions, so readers who enjoy a fully fleshed out world with clearly defined parameters will find the time period, characters and world building terribly hard to pin down.
One chapter simply reads:
"There is a sign in my grandfathers' workshop that says this: 180 degrees is half a circle, but also a line." Page 156
The Avian Hourglass reminded me of the kind of D&Ms (deep and meaningful conversations) I had in my twenties and here Drager includes discussions about memory, grief, murmurations, the concentric circles of home, the ever changing globe, the march of technology and nostalgia.
It also reads like a fever dream at times, touching on the surreal, including: recurring déjà vu, a sentient planetarium who wants to see the night sky and the ghosts of birds.
"Luce says that my father believed we were all part of a very great fabricated reality, that we have been placed here strategically, as part of a way of knowing what kind of patterns humans will discover and what kind of patterns humans will invent." Page 160
As well as demonstrating for both sides of The Crisis on alternate days, our main character still faces the conundrum and it's one the reader should immediately relate to, but not necessarily have an answer for:
"The conundrum being how to get out of bed each day knowing all the cruelty and horror of the world is unfolding around you, knowing humans are hurting humans in small and large ways in the house next door, the next town over, across the ocean on another continent.
The conundrum being bringing three new humans into the world knowing there are problems in this life that will still exist long after they are dead and gone, problems they cannot escape, that they may participate in - unconsciously - because the problems are bound to the way the world has been shaped.
The conundrum being that there are no longer birds, that the stars are no longer visible." Page 191
In The Avian Hourglass, Drager is offering us a glimpse into a future I think we'd all like to avoid. A future devoid of stars and birds is inconceivable and I feel an uncomfortable tightness in my chest allowing myself to consider this reality just for a moment. The novel demonstrates moments of beauty, love and connection in the world while simultaneously serving as a warning to the modern reader.
This is my second book from this author, having read The Archive of Alternate Endings last year and The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
* Copy courtesy of Dzanc Books *
A surrogate mother to triplets, she became their primary carer after the sudden death of their biological parents in an accident. Doing her best to raise the triplets despite lacking a guiding maternal instinct, I enjoyed her perspective:
"It's a bit unsettling, but children as a rule are unsettling, so I find a way to be both unsettled and also proud." Page 15
Also unsettling is the distant future the author creates, remarking early on:
"I believe when we reached the end of birds - birds, whose genetic code outlived dinosaurs - people realized we were at the precipice of a whole new paradigm of being." Page 27
Gosh I hope I never see that day. Taking place during this unspecified future is The Crisis, which isn't named or described but which divides the population in their isolated settlement into Yes/No camps. Our protagonist is undecided and the reader can readily substitute their own cause or crisis in order to relate to the narrative:
"I have a thought that perhaps we have mistakenly identified as sides what are in fact two responses to the same threat and if only we really sat down and talked about it, maybe cried about it, perhaps made art about it, we would come to realize this fact." Page 27
The Crisis and what it might symbolise is left to the individual reader, yet my perspective shifted from climate change to religion and our protagonist soon realises there could be more than one crisis. Ain't that the truth!
What is clear is our protagonist's love of stars and the night sky and her dream to become an astronomer. As the protagonist studies for the admittance test, there's plenty of space content. This has earned the phrase 'an elegy of space' in the blurb but let's hear from the woman herself:
"I will be a radio astronomer because I want it so much that the blood inside me aches. If you want something enough, in this world, in this town, I believe that you can get it. It's about hard work and real want. It's about never giving up." Page 39
Inspiring stuff! Just as our author is exploring on the page what life might be like in the future (no birds, no stars), our main character does so too. And while considering her three children could live beyond the end of this millennium, the reader is still not clear on when in time this novel is set.
"I would not understand who it was staring back at me and the fact of me being made of skin and bone and blood on a planet that rotates around a sun and in a world where most things crawl but some swim and billowing vapor lives overhead and there is divorce and soda and we move around in vehicles fuelled by liquified dinosaur and there are picnics but there is also murder, and chocolate but also hate." Pages 99-100
Reading The Avian Hourglass is an ethereal experience and I frequently found myself visualising the text, pausing to daydream or consider a description. This lead to a drifting attention and typically this signifies a lack of engagement but I wonder if that's what Drager intended.
The author seems to paint her worlds with wisps and suggestions, so readers who enjoy a fully fleshed out world with clearly defined parameters will find the time period, characters and world building terribly hard to pin down.
One chapter simply reads:
"There is a sign in my grandfathers' workshop that says this: 180 degrees is half a circle, but also a line." Page 156
The Avian Hourglass reminded me of the kind of D&Ms (deep and meaningful conversations) I had in my twenties and here Drager includes discussions about memory, grief, murmurations, the concentric circles of home, the ever changing globe, the march of technology and nostalgia.
It also reads like a fever dream at times, touching on the surreal, including: recurring déjà vu, a sentient planetarium who wants to see the night sky and the ghosts of birds.
"Luce says that my father believed we were all part of a very great fabricated reality, that we have been placed here strategically, as part of a way of knowing what kind of patterns humans will discover and what kind of patterns humans will invent." Page 160
As well as demonstrating for both sides of The Crisis on alternate days, our main character still faces the conundrum and it's one the reader should immediately relate to, but not necessarily have an answer for:
"The conundrum being how to get out of bed each day knowing all the cruelty and horror of the world is unfolding around you, knowing humans are hurting humans in small and large ways in the house next door, the next town over, across the ocean on another continent.
The conundrum being bringing three new humans into the world knowing there are problems in this life that will still exist long after they are dead and gone, problems they cannot escape, that they may participate in - unconsciously - because the problems are bound to the way the world has been shaped.
The conundrum being that there are no longer birds, that the stars are no longer visible." Page 191
In The Avian Hourglass, Drager is offering us a glimpse into a future I think we'd all like to avoid. A future devoid of stars and birds is inconceivable and I feel an uncomfortable tightness in my chest allowing myself to consider this reality just for a moment. The novel demonstrates moments of beauty, love and connection in the world while simultaneously serving as a warning to the modern reader.
This is my second book from this author, having read The Archive of Alternate Endings last year and The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager is recommended for readers of literary fiction.
* Copy courtesy of Dzanc Books *
February 16, 2025
Maybe.
August 7, 2024
#adprproduct - I adored Drager's The Archive of Alternate Endings and was thrilled when @dzancbooks reached out to offer me a copy of her next work. The Avian Hourglass is a beguiling tale of a sad and plausible future - a world where birds are extinct and humans can no longer see the stars, a world where driverless cars are taking jobs and workers can't see where their labour goes. Yet it is also a world where art flourishes - where huge installations of bird nests appear in a small town, and a playwright reimagines the tale of Icarus as allegory for the Crisis facing humanity. Each chapter counts down from 180, and is told in vignette style. We follow an unnamed woman as she raises triplets she was the surrogate for after their parents' deaths, supported by her Aunt Luce and their uncle Uri. We watch her study for the final chance at an exam to become a radio astronomer, and watch the town around her change as it discovers and works to uncover a secret. The longer I think about this novel, the more I am enchanted by it. Amid increasingly difficult circumstances, we watch the best of humanity surface and push against division, pull towards connection and art, and find its way back towards what matters. There are so many intricate threads woven to make this story the perfect whole it becomes in its final moments that I want to dwell on it further. No-one writes about astronomy and human nature and stories like Drager, and I can't think of any other book quite like this one. Give it a try if you are happy to spin into the orbit of small town lives with big ideas and all the essence of humanity pan-seared into sharp, beautiful vignettes. Another utterly unique work.
April 13, 2025
Lindsey Drager’s The Avian Hourglass is a life changing book. Drager weaves together themes of failure, loss, and hope in such a new and interesting way. The reader follows a nameless main character who navigates a dying world without birds or stars. The character is facing a constant battle between choosing a side (YES or NO) and struggles with the fact that neither side fits. The book mentions this unknown and unnamed crisis that looms over everything that happens. The book slowly counts down from 180 leading to some unknown climax and everything seems to be happening in an orbit or a cycle. Throughout the book we also get to hear the ghost of birds, indecipherable, that reminds us of how they used to be there. I also love this book’s theme of the importance of art. The main character mentions art several times and we see examples through man-made bird nests, the play that Uri puts on, the star house, and through the planets that were slowly discovered. This book made me think about the environment and how little we take things like the birds and stars for granted. There are so many beautiful things around us and we often do not notice them until they are gone. The main character also becomes more and more aware that they are in a story which is not always my favorite trope in a story but it is so subtle in this book that it was not a problem for me. Although confusing at times, this book really spoke to me.
January 29, 2025
my sign to look at the sky more
June 21, 2025
A beautiful, strange and oddly affecting novel. The story is set in a near future where a complex environmental crisis (likely the same one we live in) has caused the disappearance of birds and hidden the stars behind layers of smog. The unnamed protagonist lives in a state of vague existential anxiety, encapsulated within a cosy but limited bubble which suffuses her life (and the story) with a sense of strangeness and disconnection. Her life, enmeshed with those of the people around her, moves gently through cycles that feel inevitable and part of a barely comprehensible system. There is an understanding of a greater reality just out of sight which she yearns to reach, but she feels held in place by cycles of cause and effect, connection and loss, that do not feel escapable.
The strangeness of the story felt familiar to me. It is that same strangeness that we push to the back of our minds in order to function within our own cycles of life. It is the feeling that our society has reached a level of complexity that makes it impossible to truly understand our places and roles in the system, or the cause-and-effect relationships that we are all a part of. It is the feeling that taking a stand is always a leap of faith when one cannot fully understand the context in which one lives. It is the knowledge that we can only ever experience small, enclosed cycles within the vast framework of human reality, and our need to maintain a feeling of connection despite this.
The beauty of this novel is not in presenting a philosophy to the reader, but in transmuting that feeling of strangeness to the written word. And in crafting a story within that strangeness that is filled with love, connection, and a deep empathy for a person unmoored in life and a group of people doing the best that they can for each other.
There are so many things about this book that I found meaningful. The writing is simple but metaphorical and several lines made me stop to reflect on my own feelings. I suspect it's the sort of book that everyone will understand a little differently and from which we will all take something slightly different.
The strangeness of the story felt familiar to me. It is that same strangeness that we push to the back of our minds in order to function within our own cycles of life. It is the feeling that our society has reached a level of complexity that makes it impossible to truly understand our places and roles in the system, or the cause-and-effect relationships that we are all a part of. It is the feeling that taking a stand is always a leap of faith when one cannot fully understand the context in which one lives. It is the knowledge that we can only ever experience small, enclosed cycles within the vast framework of human reality, and our need to maintain a feeling of connection despite this.
The beauty of this novel is not in presenting a philosophy to the reader, but in transmuting that feeling of strangeness to the written word. And in crafting a story within that strangeness that is filled with love, connection, and a deep empathy for a person unmoored in life and a group of people doing the best that they can for each other.
There are so many things about this book that I found meaningful. The writing is simple but metaphorical and several lines made me stop to reflect on my own feelings. I suspect it's the sort of book that everyone will understand a little differently and from which we will all take something slightly different.
September 15, 2025
This book really surprised me! I put it down a few times and only begrudgingly picked it up again. The narrator & her all-consuming obsession with becoming a radio astronomer really irritated me, and a lot of the symbolism in the book felt cliche & predictable (the deja vu, the globes, the eclipse, Icarus, etc.) But I kept reading out of a burning desire to know how it ended (and partially out of spite), and by the middle it had totally sucked me in and I hardly put it down until I finished. Lots of interesting reflections on human perceptions and understandings of time, and crisis. Kind of reminded me of Nightvale???? Also of Jenny Offil's "Weather," for obvious stylistic reasons. Would recommend.
August 12, 2025
I love the prose and the imagery and the ideas of the characters. When they say lyrically beautiful they mean this. I am also not quite sure about what the rewinding means and how that corresponds to the main character's reality. Are we all girls in glass? Is it just her, and is she trapping herself?
Where did the birds go?
Where did the birds go?
November 22, 2024
Mind-bending insane unsettling beautiful woah
April 15, 2025
When I first began reading this book, I was at first confused with the descending order or of number as I read. I thought that maybe I was reading the book backwards and decided to skip to the end and read p. That’s when I discovered it was the same way ascending. Then, I got over it and started reading. And let me say this: I enjoyed this book.
At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it because I am normally into more fantastical setting, like Lord of the RIngs or Harry Potter, but this book pleasantly surprised me with its setting. First off, I really liked the sort of self awareness the protagonist has throughout the book as though she is a character in a play reading odd a script with determined actions and such. I also really like the etymological tidbits throughout. I’m not a linguistics buff or anything, but it's still fun to learn the origin, or lack thereof, of certain words spoken in the English language.
THe last thing I could mention is Uri. I originally heard this story in a sample reading with the author. During that reading, I got the impression that Uri was a bird that the protagonist had created to be a companion throughout the story and thought it made sense because birds no longer existed. Then I read the story and discovered that Uri was a playwright and was working in his rendition of Icarus. Hence the wings and bird imagery. Glad I got that cleared up.
Anyway, overall a good story and would recommend for others to read.
At first, I didn’t think I was going to like it because I am normally into more fantastical setting, like Lord of the RIngs or Harry Potter, but this book pleasantly surprised me with its setting. First off, I really liked the sort of self awareness the protagonist has throughout the book as though she is a character in a play reading odd a script with determined actions and such. I also really like the etymological tidbits throughout. I’m not a linguistics buff or anything, but it's still fun to learn the origin, or lack thereof, of certain words spoken in the English language.
THe last thing I could mention is Uri. I originally heard this story in a sample reading with the author. During that reading, I got the impression that Uri was a bird that the protagonist had created to be a companion throughout the story and thought it made sense because birds no longer existed. Then I read the story and discovered that Uri was a playwright and was working in his rendition of Icarus. Hence the wings and bird imagery. Glad I got that cleared up.
Anyway, overall a good story and would recommend for others to read.
April 3, 2025
I impulsively decided to read this one thanks to a group discussion over at the Literary Horror Group (https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...). I'm thrilled I did as I had never heard of Drager and I found this book quite hard to put down. It managed to be menacing but ruminative, tense, and... how shall I phrase it?... satisfyingly unresolved... ?
Drager drops us into a kind of subtly multi-layered quiet apocalypse: The birds are gone. The night sky no longer shows the heavens. Our main character is raising a group of delightfully creepy precog-like triplets along with a male "stepdad" who is rewriting a play about Icarus. She wants badly to be a radio astronomer, but only has one chance left to pass the exam she's failed 4 times already. In the meantime, she drives a bus that's about to become a self-driving vehicle in a mysterious town that routinely practices a Demonstration where people decide if they are YES or NO people. And this is the shortest way I could figure to let you know this story manages to be a kind of metafictional exploration of climate crisis, loss, grief, storytelling, and meaning. It's narrative arc bends dangerously close to flat, yet it managed to pull me into its unsettling orbit. If those disappeared birds could whisper, you can still hear their whispered echoes in this text...
Drager drops us into a kind of subtly multi-layered quiet apocalypse: The birds are gone. The night sky no longer shows the heavens. Our main character is raising a group of delightfully creepy precog-like triplets along with a male "stepdad" who is rewriting a play about Icarus. She wants badly to be a radio astronomer, but only has one chance left to pass the exam she's failed 4 times already. In the meantime, she drives a bus that's about to become a self-driving vehicle in a mysterious town that routinely practices a Demonstration where people decide if they are YES or NO people. And this is the shortest way I could figure to let you know this story manages to be a kind of metafictional exploration of climate crisis, loss, grief, storytelling, and meaning. It's narrative arc bends dangerously close to flat, yet it managed to pull me into its unsettling orbit. If those disappeared birds could whisper, you can still hear their whispered echoes in this text...
November 20, 2024
Solid four stars, maybe even end up being a five-star book for me, but time will tell. I found this after reading a story by Drager in Alaska Quarterly Review and liking it so much that I ordered two of her novels. This was short, but not a super quick read for me. I found a lot to think about as I read.
An unspecified climate disaster has impacted a closed-off town in such a way that the stars can no longer be seen and the birds are gone. The main character sis raising the triplets she was carrying as a surrogate when their parents died, and trying to pass a test so she can change careers.
The structure is interesting. The story is told in 180 short numbered sections, which count down as the book goes on. I don't want to give anything away, but the way the sections are handled mirrors another motif found in the story in a way that I found quite satisfying and impressive.
I think I would get even more out of a re-read, which I would totally do except there are SO MANY BOOKS.
An unspecified climate disaster has impacted a closed-off town in such a way that the stars can no longer be seen and the birds are gone. The main character sis raising the triplets she was carrying as a surrogate when their parents died, and trying to pass a test so she can change careers.
The structure is interesting. The story is told in 180 short numbered sections, which count down as the book goes on. I don't want to give anything away, but the way the sections are handled mirrors another motif found in the story in a way that I found quite satisfying and impressive.
I think I would get even more out of a re-read, which I would totally do except there are SO MANY BOOKS.
March 29, 2025
This book was written in birdsong - beautiful, haunting, and mostly incomprehensible.
The book deserves more stars, but the second half of the novel filled with with dread and exhaustion, and I had to force myself to finish it. I could relate to the main character a lot, and this is one of those rare books that I've enjoyed which were written in the first person, but it was hard for me to care about anyone in the book, especially in the second part of the novel. The relationships between the characters seemed superficial and devoid of any genuine feelings except sadness and loneliness. That was probably the point of the story, but the focus on it was throughout the entire novel, and I grew irritated by the main character's overwhelming melancholia.
I can't deny the author has some mad writing skills though.
3.5/5
The book deserves more stars, but the second half of the novel filled with with dread and exhaustion, and I had to force myself to finish it. I could relate to the main character a lot, and this is one of those rare books that I've enjoyed which were written in the first person, but it was hard for me to care about anyone in the book, especially in the second part of the novel. The relationships between the characters seemed superficial and devoid of any genuine feelings except sadness and loneliness. That was probably the point of the story, but the focus on it was throughout the entire novel, and I grew irritated by the main character's overwhelming melancholia.
I can't deny the author has some mad writing skills though.
3.5/5
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July 12, 2025Profoundly strange and overall I loved it. It was hard for me to read it as anything but literal although I think there is a lot of existential and metaphorical happening that I'm just not getting.
There are some really beautiful passages and interactions. There are some really beautiful elements. I described it through these motifs to intrigue friends: a world with no birds or stars, human sized bird nests, yard full of false globes, a best friend with wings full of ephemera, an aunt who knows the origin of worlds, competing theories of the nature of existence and the world.
There is climate change grief, AI/technology grief, mental illness grief, and a parable fable overlay.
I didn't love the ending but I don't know how one would end such a strange, fabulist story. I don't think it'll be for everyone but it's short and worth a try if it sounds at all intriguing.
There are some really beautiful passages and interactions. There are some really beautiful elements. I described it through these motifs to intrigue friends: a world with no birds or stars, human sized bird nests, yard full of false globes, a best friend with wings full of ephemera, an aunt who knows the origin of worlds, competing theories of the nature of existence and the world.
There is climate change grief, AI/technology grief, mental illness grief, and a parable fable overlay.
I didn't love the ending but I don't know how one would end such a strange, fabulist story. I don't think it'll be for everyone but it's short and worth a try if it sounds at all intriguing.
August 4, 2025
I quite enjoyed this book, though it took me a while to figure out the structure of it.
I liked the narrator's voice, and the characters. I appreciated that it was like our world, but slightly changed (futuristic?).
I liked the diary/day to day aspect of the novel, following these characters.
It is about ecological destruction, but it is also about art and creating in the face of destruction.
But it is also about personal relationships, children, our relationship to the future and the past.
I enjoyed the writing style, so I would definitely read another book by her.
I liked the narrator's voice, and the characters. I appreciated that it was like our world, but slightly changed (futuristic?).
I liked the diary/day to day aspect of the novel, following these characters.
It is about ecological destruction, but it is also about art and creating in the face of destruction.
But it is also about personal relationships, children, our relationship to the future and the past.
I enjoyed the writing style, so I would definitely read another book by her.
July 4, 2025
This book is fascinating. My reading experience was highly enjoyable in that the story captured my attention from the start, and page-by-page, brick-by-brick, built a house in my imagination whose thematic discoveries by the end were very satisfying. Intelligent, interesting, heartbreaking. This quote from The Avian Hourglass sums up how I feel about it: "...in really good storytelling nothing ever ends or dies--rather, everything is merely transformed..." 5 Stars!
December 14, 2025
Reminds me of Irreversible + Vivarium + Space Odyssey. I’m sure a lot of folks would not get past first couple chapters due to it being a little jumpy and slow, but fast-paced payoff is not the point of this novel. It’s about slow, cyclical movements, loss, family, and the ability for retrograde thinking to somehow move us forward.
August 22, 2024
The Avian Hourglass is not the type of book I typically read as a mostly fantasy reader, but I saw it at the library and decided to give it a shot and it is incredibly well written and makes you think. The author does a great job of showing unease and anxiety in the characters.
September 12, 2024
I enjoyed reading the overview of "The Avian Hourglass" and believe it has great potential. I have a few insights that could enhance the story and overall impact. Feel free to reach out to me at yunusmr574@gmail.com to talk about it more.
April 21, 2025
I love this book. I love it because it is courageous. It says things I feel, and it does things I want books to do.
I recommend this book to everybody, but especially people who feel like they are living in crisis...so....everybody.
I recommend this book to everybody, but especially people who feel like they are living in crisis...so....everybody.
August 23, 2025
I get why I'm supposed to like it and there were some parts of the book that worked for me, but overall not a favorite, would've appreciated expanding on some subjects and cutting down on others. Good writing overall!
September 4, 2025
Spectacular, ambitious, and delightful - this short and easy to read book deftly weaves together a number of big, important themes about humanity, community, art, and individual will in a time of uncertainty.
October 26, 2024
Aaaaughhh it hurts
January 9, 2025
Well, I just liked that a whole lot. Calm, sad, and beautiful.
April 7, 2025
Odd book. It is short, but takes time to process what you are reading!
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