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Hourglass
A FEBRUARY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
A short, lyrical debut novel about love, loss, work, time, and the unquenchable desire for connection with others—for fans of Jenny Offill, Mieko Kawakami, David Szalay and Sheila Heti
The second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar. It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp. We were good at that. We could have fit an entire universe inside a matchbox.
Exquisitely crafted, richly imagined, and as funny as it is moving, Hourglass is an unusual and uniquely told love story. Turning time upside down, it combs the wreckage of personal heartbreak for something universal and asks what it means to lose what you love.
“This book is such a sneaky head f*ck—an epic poem in an ancient style about the brutalities of modern love, a masculine interrogation of feminine heartbreak, a really beautiful way to spend an evening”—Lena Dunham
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE
A short, lyrical debut novel about love, loss, work, time, and the unquenchable desire for connection with others—for fans of Jenny Offill, Mieko Kawakami, David Szalay and Sheila Heti
The second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar. It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp. We were good at that. We could have fit an entire universe inside a matchbox.
Exquisitely crafted, richly imagined, and as funny as it is moving, Hourglass is an unusual and uniquely told love story. Turning time upside down, it combs the wreckage of personal heartbreak for something universal and asks what it means to lose what you love.
“This book is such a sneaky head f*ck—an epic poem in an ancient style about the brutalities of modern love, a masculine interrogation of feminine heartbreak, a really beautiful way to spend an evening”—Lena Dunham
208 pages, Hardcover
First published February 14, 2023
34 people are currently reading
1765 people want to read
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August 23, 2025
‘Happiness makes you become what you hate.’
The landscapes of love have their own unique inner-logic. It is something like dream logic, which I suppose I should say is more a lack of rational logic, something that is often baffling and incongruous from the outside but while within it makes complete sense. It's the leaps in logic that tell you dumping your entire bank account and selling off anything you can to get a passport and flight across the ocean for a weekend is totally normal (I stand by it), or, as happens here in Keiran Goddard’s Hourglass, find it romantic and sexy to have your partner ‘push a bit of chewed-up potato into my mouth as if I were a baby bird.’ Goddard has a gift at mining the private moments of relationships, be it with a lover or yourself, and exposing how humorous it is outside the present internal emotion while still retaining the reverence for that internal emotion. Hourglass uses humor to probe the depths of the heart and the discomfort of modern living and loving, appearing almost like prose poetry in a sparse stream-of-consciousness style of singular sentences spaced out across the page in vignettes to embody a particular moment. It is a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy and girl dance a romance, boy loses girl and must cope with the loss while finding a way to keep on living, yet Goddard’s sardonic humor (there’s nearly a stand-up comedian delivery to it all) and wit keep it fresh and highly relatable while still feeling very personal. Like any relationship that has come to a close, this is a heartfelt, eccentric blend of comedy and sorrow that is perhaps a bit overly meandering and stuffed despite the short length and slender prose, yet Goddard’s insights makes for a worthwhile fling with Hourglass.
‘We are trying to make a home. But you are considerably better at it than I am.’
This is a very quirky story made all the more offbeat with the staccato style of singular sentences spaced out and leaping from idea to idea that feels like my ADHD brain and has earned comparisons to Jenny Offill, though the very internet and millennial style humor, irony and clear attempts to be relatable reminded me most of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This . Another who comes to mind is Max Porter, particularly in the ways this book deals with a sensitive person who dislikes the toxic masculinities that many men present but also can’t quite figure out how to exist in a world while being so vulnerable. It’s a quick read, smacking you with ideas one after another and rotating fists of funny and sad which leaves you emotionally drained by the end. In a good way.
The narrator is clearly intelligent, with that sort of overly academic humor that cuts right to the philosophical heart of issues, and it is amusing to watch him rant at society. This is the type of person that makes acute observations and bold remarks such as ‘I convinced myself that stock phrases were fascist and that we all had a duty to unpetrify the language,’ and the type that masks discomfort with drinking too much and humor, the combination of which makes him stand-offish when drunk and arguing things laced with contempt like ‘the poetry of Keats isn’t factual, but only an idiot would say it isn’t true.’ This is the type of person I definitely know, and (shamefully) sometimes am, so uhh… Goddard, what's up with all these personal attacks, mate? When not working an after-hours stockroom shift at a bookstore, he contemplates writing a book on why he hates cars and pens op-eds almost nobody publishes with Very Online style titles—a running gag through the book is to punctuate an idea with the headline he would write about the subject complete with the word count in parentheses—such as The Climate Crisis Has Taken That Most Banal Conversational Topic—the Weather—and Injected It With a Constant Undercurrent of Looming Existential Dread, LOL! or even Maybe the Real Price of Oil Was the Friends We Made Along the Way! (4,004 words). The latter is his first publication and the doorway into the relationship central to the novel:
‘ It was you. You published it. You paid me seventy-five pounds and in response I spent the rest of my life loving you.’
The story is written to a ‘you,’ which is understood as the woman in the failed relationship he is recounting and makes this read much like a letter to her trying to understand it all. But the perspective doesn’t always hold up contextually, though instead of seeming like a flaw it feels like it welcomes YOU the reader to embody the addressed you and I like to think of this as a love affair between Goddard and me, the reader. Sexy, right? Getting all into each other’s vulnerable grey matter. But anyways, what unfolds is some rather beautiful reminiscing on love always tinged in a prevailing sadness being told from a present where these memories are now draining of color and curling at the edges like old photographs in a shoebox that is disconsolating to look at but you can’t quite throw away (but definitely need to if you get in another relationship, don’t keep those things, nobody wants to find that). There are some lovely phrases though here that embody the excitement and terror of a fresh relationship quite well, such as:
‘That time, the second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar.
It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp.
We were good at that. We could have fit and entire universe inside a matchbox.’
Goddard is good at capturing ineffable sadness as well with observations that allow reality to drain away the magic yet still shimmer in the prose like: ‘There were no stars when we left the bar. The sky looked like the inside of a cheap tent.’ It also gets into some embarrassing and gross shit with admissions like ‘I ate one of the hair balls once. Just a small one. It tasted like you. Like the sheer fucking stun of you.’ Yet in these moments, with a delivery like a stand-up comedian, we see just how much the illogic of the logic of love is a pervasive and fulfilling emotion. It’s private and beautiful because we are all gross anyways and Hourglass is most successful when addressing being vulnerable, accepting we are gross, being weird, being open to hurt and then, being vulnerable enough to look inward and move on.
‘I start walking to work, remembering how loving you has changed everything.
How love snuck through the city and repainted it when we weren’t paying attention.’
The later segments of the novel are morose, with the humor laughed out with a bit of a bite to it. We sit in the narrator’s head while he tries and fails to be a person, we see him berate a child he thinks is stealing his can of beans only for him to be a Boy Scout there to help bag (okay that part is billed as sad but the delivery is so funny). A woman once tells the narrator living with him ‘is like living with the sad ghost of a failed comedian,’ and we witness him haunt himself over the course of five years since the breakup. Her line is a perfect metaphor for this book, which, while funny and well-done, has that sort of not-quite-there feel that comedy films that try too hard to also be sad and moralizing relationship dramas. Not that Goddard seems like he is trying too hard, quite the opposite this rolls out like a beautiful new baby as natural and naked as can be, but it does just seem like it should be a pre-scandal Louis C.K. movie of him being sad and vulgar through the dying embers of a relationship, which would probably not have been as good as this book but you get the vibe.
It gets uncomfortable, which is well done and makes a good point. We see how he is his own undoing, the ways his drinking and constant need to be ironically humorous or hating things can make him difficult to be around. As someone who can’t seem to ever shut off their mind (look at the length of these reviews, sorry everyone), seeing him rant about how its sad both the Flintstones and the Jetsons are depressing because we can’t imagine a past or future that isn’t just a nuclear family arguing about chores and how much she just does not want to hear it because being with someone like that all the time is exhausting. I feel attacked but I appreciate it, and I enjoy that Goddard doesn’t make this a whole ‘you gotta change your life and your ways you fucking loser’ but more of a reminder we have to carry on and maybe do it in a less self-inflicting and self-destructive way but don’t lose the spark of who you are.
How much is too much? the narrator asks near the end a few times. Which, unfortunately, is also the question I had about what I felt over the book while reading it. Because it is short and a easy read to speed through, but it also felt anfractuous and too much for the style. There’s something to be said that this type of living and approach to the world isn’t enough to build a life on, which is embodied by the way the book is almost too weightless to drape it’s musings over. There are a lot of really great elements but they don’t necessarily blend and sometimes it feels like even in a less is more style narrative, less would have been more and could have allowed a greater focus.
‘But beyond hating work generally, I also hate my work specifically.’
That said I LOVED how much he peppered in social criticism, particularly about work and how a capitalist society adds so much friction to a life it is hard to live and love effectively with all that beating you up every day. It is a laugh line but when he yells ‘it’s that I think that the very idea of a work ethic is a quasi-theological injunction historically leveraged against the working class in order to drive labour intensification on behalf of capital!’ at his employer, I felt that. When not being a poet or penning this first novel, Goddard develops research of worker’s rights and speaks on issues of the future of work, automation and unionism. The moments where this makes it into the book (like the factory he briefly works at where all they do is unpackage items only to repackage them again in order to say they were made in the UK) are some of the highest points and the humor aimed at social critiques are wonderful. It also really endears me to Goddard.
‘Me, not yet brave enough to feel joy.’
This is a novel I wanted to enjoy more than I did, but I also don’t think there is anything really wrong with it, it just didn’t land with me that well. Sorry, Goddard, I actually really respect the hell out of you and this book for what it’s worth. You are hilarious too. It’s an uncomfortable book, but it uses that discomfort to shed the layers of life and really look inside us all and the ways we live and love. This is, above all, a book about being vulnerable and I like how much the narrator is really a vulnerable, sensitive person and the ways they are nervous about showing this to the world drives others away. The irony of that is really tragic but true and, in Hourglass it is made beautiful. This is an oddball of a book, but one that I think people should read and will likely get a lot out of. Funny, sad, zany, biting, witty and certainly gorgeously written, Hourglass captures matters of the heart under the duress of having to all be people interacting with other people quiet elegantly and effectively.
3.5/5
‘A conclusion. You have to live. What else is there to do with a life?’
The landscapes of love have their own unique inner-logic. It is something like dream logic, which I suppose I should say is more a lack of rational logic, something that is often baffling and incongruous from the outside but while within it makes complete sense. It's the leaps in logic that tell you dumping your entire bank account and selling off anything you can to get a passport and flight across the ocean for a weekend is totally normal (I stand by it), or, as happens here in Keiran Goddard’s Hourglass, find it romantic and sexy to have your partner ‘push a bit of chewed-up potato into my mouth as if I were a baby bird.’ Goddard has a gift at mining the private moments of relationships, be it with a lover or yourself, and exposing how humorous it is outside the present internal emotion while still retaining the reverence for that internal emotion. Hourglass uses humor to probe the depths of the heart and the discomfort of modern living and loving, appearing almost like prose poetry in a sparse stream-of-consciousness style of singular sentences spaced out across the page in vignettes to embody a particular moment. It is a tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy and girl dance a romance, boy loses girl and must cope with the loss while finding a way to keep on living, yet Goddard’s sardonic humor (there’s nearly a stand-up comedian delivery to it all) and wit keep it fresh and highly relatable while still feeling very personal. Like any relationship that has come to a close, this is a heartfelt, eccentric blend of comedy and sorrow that is perhaps a bit overly meandering and stuffed despite the short length and slender prose, yet Goddard’s insights makes for a worthwhile fling with Hourglass.
‘We are trying to make a home. But you are considerably better at it than I am.’
This is a very quirky story made all the more offbeat with the staccato style of singular sentences spaced out and leaping from idea to idea that feels like my ADHD brain and has earned comparisons to Jenny Offill, though the very internet and millennial style humor, irony and clear attempts to be relatable reminded me most of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This . Another who comes to mind is Max Porter, particularly in the ways this book deals with a sensitive person who dislikes the toxic masculinities that many men present but also can’t quite figure out how to exist in a world while being so vulnerable. It’s a quick read, smacking you with ideas one after another and rotating fists of funny and sad which leaves you emotionally drained by the end. In a good way.
The narrator is clearly intelligent, with that sort of overly academic humor that cuts right to the philosophical heart of issues, and it is amusing to watch him rant at society. This is the type of person that makes acute observations and bold remarks such as ‘I convinced myself that stock phrases were fascist and that we all had a duty to unpetrify the language,’ and the type that masks discomfort with drinking too much and humor, the combination of which makes him stand-offish when drunk and arguing things laced with contempt like ‘the poetry of Keats isn’t factual, but only an idiot would say it isn’t true.’ This is the type of person I definitely know, and (shamefully) sometimes am, so uhh… Goddard, what's up with all these personal attacks, mate? When not working an after-hours stockroom shift at a bookstore, he contemplates writing a book on why he hates cars and pens op-eds almost nobody publishes with Very Online style titles—a running gag through the book is to punctuate an idea with the headline he would write about the subject complete with the word count in parentheses—such as The Climate Crisis Has Taken That Most Banal Conversational Topic—the Weather—and Injected It With a Constant Undercurrent of Looming Existential Dread, LOL! or even Maybe the Real Price of Oil Was the Friends We Made Along the Way! (4,004 words). The latter is his first publication and the doorway into the relationship central to the novel:
‘ It was you. You published it. You paid me seventy-five pounds and in response I spent the rest of my life loving you.’
The story is written to a ‘you,’ which is understood as the woman in the failed relationship he is recounting and makes this read much like a letter to her trying to understand it all. But the perspective doesn’t always hold up contextually, though instead of seeming like a flaw it feels like it welcomes YOU the reader to embody the addressed you and I like to think of this as a love affair between Goddard and me, the reader. Sexy, right? Getting all into each other’s vulnerable grey matter. But anyways, what unfolds is some rather beautiful reminiscing on love always tinged in a prevailing sadness being told from a present where these memories are now draining of color and curling at the edges like old photographs in a shoebox that is disconsolating to look at but you can’t quite throw away (but definitely need to if you get in another relationship, don’t keep those things, nobody wants to find that). There are some lovely phrases though here that embody the excitement and terror of a fresh relationship quite well, such as:
‘That time, the second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar.
It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp.
We were good at that. We could have fit and entire universe inside a matchbox.’
Goddard is good at capturing ineffable sadness as well with observations that allow reality to drain away the magic yet still shimmer in the prose like: ‘There were no stars when we left the bar. The sky looked like the inside of a cheap tent.’ It also gets into some embarrassing and gross shit with admissions like ‘I ate one of the hair balls once. Just a small one. It tasted like you. Like the sheer fucking stun of you.’ Yet in these moments, with a delivery like a stand-up comedian, we see just how much the illogic of the logic of love is a pervasive and fulfilling emotion. It’s private and beautiful because we are all gross anyways and Hourglass is most successful when addressing being vulnerable, accepting we are gross, being weird, being open to hurt and then, being vulnerable enough to look inward and move on.
‘I start walking to work, remembering how loving you has changed everything.
How love snuck through the city and repainted it when we weren’t paying attention.’
The later segments of the novel are morose, with the humor laughed out with a bit of a bite to it. We sit in the narrator’s head while he tries and fails to be a person, we see him berate a child he thinks is stealing his can of beans only for him to be a Boy Scout there to help bag (okay that part is billed as sad but the delivery is so funny). A woman once tells the narrator living with him ‘is like living with the sad ghost of a failed comedian,’ and we witness him haunt himself over the course of five years since the breakup. Her line is a perfect metaphor for this book, which, while funny and well-done, has that sort of not-quite-there feel that comedy films that try too hard to also be sad and moralizing relationship dramas. Not that Goddard seems like he is trying too hard, quite the opposite this rolls out like a beautiful new baby as natural and naked as can be, but it does just seem like it should be a pre-scandal Louis C.K. movie of him being sad and vulgar through the dying embers of a relationship, which would probably not have been as good as this book but you get the vibe.
It gets uncomfortable, which is well done and makes a good point. We see how he is his own undoing, the ways his drinking and constant need to be ironically humorous or hating things can make him difficult to be around. As someone who can’t seem to ever shut off their mind (look at the length of these reviews, sorry everyone), seeing him rant about how its sad both the Flintstones and the Jetsons are depressing because we can’t imagine a past or future that isn’t just a nuclear family arguing about chores and how much she just does not want to hear it because being with someone like that all the time is exhausting. I feel attacked but I appreciate it, and I enjoy that Goddard doesn’t make this a whole ‘you gotta change your life and your ways you fucking loser’ but more of a reminder we have to carry on and maybe do it in a less self-inflicting and self-destructive way but don’t lose the spark of who you are.
How much is too much? the narrator asks near the end a few times. Which, unfortunately, is also the question I had about what I felt over the book while reading it. Because it is short and a easy read to speed through, but it also felt anfractuous and too much for the style. There’s something to be said that this type of living and approach to the world isn’t enough to build a life on, which is embodied by the way the book is almost too weightless to drape it’s musings over. There are a lot of really great elements but they don’t necessarily blend and sometimes it feels like even in a less is more style narrative, less would have been more and could have allowed a greater focus.
‘But beyond hating work generally, I also hate my work specifically.’
That said I LOVED how much he peppered in social criticism, particularly about work and how a capitalist society adds so much friction to a life it is hard to live and love effectively with all that beating you up every day. It is a laugh line but when he yells ‘it’s that I think that the very idea of a work ethic is a quasi-theological injunction historically leveraged against the working class in order to drive labour intensification on behalf of capital!’ at his employer, I felt that. When not being a poet or penning this first novel, Goddard develops research of worker’s rights and speaks on issues of the future of work, automation and unionism. The moments where this makes it into the book (like the factory he briefly works at where all they do is unpackage items only to repackage them again in order to say they were made in the UK) are some of the highest points and the humor aimed at social critiques are wonderful. It also really endears me to Goddard.
‘Me, not yet brave enough to feel joy.’
This is a novel I wanted to enjoy more than I did, but I also don’t think there is anything really wrong with it, it just didn’t land with me that well. Sorry, Goddard, I actually really respect the hell out of you and this book for what it’s worth. You are hilarious too. It’s an uncomfortable book, but it uses that discomfort to shed the layers of life and really look inside us all and the ways we live and love. This is, above all, a book about being vulnerable and I like how much the narrator is really a vulnerable, sensitive person and the ways they are nervous about showing this to the world drives others away. The irony of that is really tragic but true and, in Hourglass it is made beautiful. This is an oddball of a book, but one that I think people should read and will likely get a lot out of. Funny, sad, zany, biting, witty and certainly gorgeously written, Hourglass captures matters of the heart under the duress of having to all be people interacting with other people quiet elegantly and effectively.
3.5/5
‘A conclusion. You have to live. What else is there to do with a life?’
December 7, 2022
This was an interesting and very hard book to rate. It is told in small passages consisting of a few sentences. The book reads like a stream of consciousness/thoughts of a young man (the narrator). It was strange, interesting, bizarre, addictive and not like anything I have read before.
I remember that you said you didn’t mind. And I remember that you did.
The book is about love - falling in love, losing love, etc. As the narrator goes through life, readers are privy to his thoughts, what he remembers, his observations, etc. At times the passages felt poetic and lyrical and at other times I was bemused, other passages left me wondering "what am I reading?" and other times I though the author nailed it.
This was a fast read and one that once finished, I'm not sure what I think of it. It's different but good different. It kept my attention and proved to be a fast read. I can't really call this a novel, or can I? See, I still don't know what I read, yet it was enjoyable. Unique and interesting way to write a book about a young man's experience with love, heartbreak, and those in his life.
I'm used to plot driven and character driven novels. So, this book took me by surprise. It is original, and I have to give the author props for doing something different. This is a book where I wasn't quite sure about it, but every time I picked it up, I was drawn in by the 1-4 sentence passages. If you are looking for something different, creative, and original look no further! Hourglass fits the bill!
Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group and Edelweiss who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
I remember that you said you didn’t mind. And I remember that you did.
The book is about love - falling in love, losing love, etc. As the narrator goes through life, readers are privy to his thoughts, what he remembers, his observations, etc. At times the passages felt poetic and lyrical and at other times I was bemused, other passages left me wondering "what am I reading?" and other times I though the author nailed it.
This was a fast read and one that once finished, I'm not sure what I think of it. It's different but good different. It kept my attention and proved to be a fast read. I can't really call this a novel, or can I? See, I still don't know what I read, yet it was enjoyable. Unique and interesting way to write a book about a young man's experience with love, heartbreak, and those in his life.
I'm used to plot driven and character driven novels. So, this book took me by surprise. It is original, and I have to give the author props for doing something different. This is a book where I wasn't quite sure about it, but every time I picked it up, I was drawn in by the 1-4 sentence passages. If you are looking for something different, creative, and original look no further! Hourglass fits the bill!
Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group and Edelweiss who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at www.openbookposts.com
January 14, 2024
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize for debut novelists.
The author of the book has previously been a published poet and also runs a think tank and is a writer and speaker on areas such as worker’s rights and the future of work – and both his poetical writing and (to a lesser extent) his writing on work are important to this novel.
If I had to summarise the book, I would say that:
It’s a tale of (life)-time, love and loss, laughter and labour
One which perhaps could be said to be something of a masculine version of the elliptical and aphoristic writing of female authors such as Jenny Offill.
The author himself has talked about the book as about a
Which I think is an excellent explanation of the underlying narrative.
As the book is told in the first person – in a kind of part poetic, part aphoristic, and sometimes part bizarre series of 2-3 line observations, each set out in 2 page sub-sections as the narrator, looks back on his relationship with an ex-lover to who his narrative is largely addressed. All are set against a background of the day to day life of the City in which he lives, as well as a number of unfulfilling jobs the reluctantly holds and the ways in which those jobs interact with his feelings around his relationship.
The sub-sections are grouped into 3 parts (of around 30 sub-sections) which broadly look at the genesis of the relationship, its highs and then breakdown, and then the narrators post-relationship life (and at least partial breakdown).
The author has explained the title and the structure of the book:
A description which I think perhaps is a little stronger than the temporal experience I got from reading the book. Or perhaps its more accurate to say that I think a reader is less likely to remember the book in terms of its innovative approach to time than for the distinctive voice of the narrator.
Alongside his futile quest for fulfilling and remunerative employment, the narrator writes and posts to magazines semi-serious, semi-humourous essays on odd (dare I as a near-boomer say millennially obsessive) topics such as “Why Expensive Biscuits Are Always in Vertical Rather than Horizontal Packets and What That Tells Us About Renterism” or “The Climate Crisis Has Taken that most Banal Conversational Topic – the Weather – and injected it With a Constant Undercurrent of Existential Dread, LOL!”.
In his writing to his love object/us, he is a master of what I can only describe as the Patricia Lockwood style non-sequiturial simile, for example after losing two teeth and hearing of a First Nation belief that we literally embody many mini-souls we get this.
A style with which I think many readers will have a love/hate relationship but which is undeniably striking.
And the narrator also has a rather injudicious inability to know when to stop sharing his trenchant views and humourous observations which ultimately proves the beginning of the end of his relationship and his descent into breakdown.
The joint impact of the narrators personal style together with his post-relationship ennui can be a little wearing at time.
I think my own prejudices came out a little here, and preference for female over male company which further translates to a preference for female narrative voices (particular in books which are heavy on the narrative voice and stylistically if not literally auto-fictional).
At one stage in Part 3 another lover when leaving says it has been “like living with the sad ghost of a failed comedian” – which struck me as very apposite and also that he author was aware of the reaction he was aiming to provoke.
So overall I felt this was a really ambitious debut – one which tried to be different and largely succeeded on its own terms. Exactly the sort of novel and author the Desmond Elliott prize should be spotlighting.
The author of the book has previously been a published poet and also runs a think tank and is a writer and speaker on areas such as worker’s rights and the future of work – and both his poetical writing and (to a lesser extent) his writing on work are important to this novel.
If I had to summarise the book, I would say that:
It’s a tale of (life)-time, love and loss, laughter and labour
One which perhaps could be said to be something of a masculine version of the elliptical and aphoristic writing of female authors such as Jenny Offill.
The author himself has talked about the book as about a
“Tale as old as time ………Boy meets girl – boy loses girl – boy loses mind ……….. it asks questions about what love does to us, and why …………. Every love story has a happy ending if you tell it backwards. But sadly, life isn’t lived backwards, so in the end, we lose things. … if we are [un]lucky, we lose things suddenly, and way too early. How do we do this with some semblance of grace? How do we let go of things we love without debasing and ruining their legacy in the process?”
Which I think is an excellent explanation of the underlying narrative.
As the book is told in the first person – in a kind of part poetic, part aphoristic, and sometimes part bizarre series of 2-3 line observations, each set out in 2 page sub-sections as the narrator, looks back on his relationship with an ex-lover to who his narrative is largely addressed. All are set against a background of the day to day life of the City in which he lives, as well as a number of unfulfilling jobs the reluctantly holds and the ways in which those jobs interact with his feelings around his relationship.
The sub-sections are grouped into 3 parts (of around 30 sub-sections) which broadly look at the genesis of the relationship, its highs and then breakdown, and then the narrators post-relationship life (and at least partial breakdown).
The author has explained the title and the structure of the book:
”An hourglass is a curious sort of object. Whereas a clock tells us one thing, namely the time, an hourglass does something altogether more interesting. It shows us the past, the present and the future all at once. The sand at the bottom is the past, the sand heaped at the top is the future, while the present is reduced to the tiny, steady flow of grains that fall through the centre of the glass. There is something interesting about that arrangement. The past and the future looming so large compared to the present, despite the present being the place we actually exist, materially speaking at least. What would it mean if we worked to equalise those proportions? If we stretched out the present so that it loomed as large as the past and the future? The book plays with this idea and its implications. Divided into three identically sized sections, each with an identical number of subsections, it looks to disturb the interplay between these three temporal states. Tiny moments are magnified, stretched, distorted. Whole years disappear from one sentence to the next.”.
A description which I think perhaps is a little stronger than the temporal experience I got from reading the book. Or perhaps its more accurate to say that I think a reader is less likely to remember the book in terms of its innovative approach to time than for the distinctive voice of the narrator.
Alongside his futile quest for fulfilling and remunerative employment, the narrator writes and posts to magazines semi-serious, semi-humourous essays on odd (dare I as a near-boomer say millennially obsessive) topics such as “Why Expensive Biscuits Are Always in Vertical Rather than Horizontal Packets and What That Tells Us About Renterism” or “The Climate Crisis Has Taken that most Banal Conversational Topic – the Weather – and injected it With a Constant Undercurrent of Existential Dread, LOL!”.
In his writing to his love object/us, he is a master of what I can only describe as the Patricia Lockwood style non-sequiturial simile, for example after losing two teeth and hearing of a First Nation belief that we literally embody many mini-souls we get this.
told you I was two teeth and two souls lighter and that the difference between a knife and a dagger is that a knife is only sharp on one of its edges.
Asked if you would push a bit of chewed up potato into my mouth as if I were a baby bird.
I remember that you said you didn’t mind. And I remember that you did.
And I remember that it tasted like an unexpected trumpet played by a happy fat man.
A style with which I think many readers will have a love/hate relationship but which is undeniably striking.
And the narrator also has a rather injudicious inability to know when to stop sharing his trenchant views and humourous observations which ultimately proves the beginning of the end of his relationship and his descent into breakdown.
The joint impact of the narrators personal style together with his post-relationship ennui can be a little wearing at time.
I think my own prejudices came out a little here, and preference for female over male company which further translates to a preference for female narrative voices (particular in books which are heavy on the narrative voice and stylistically if not literally auto-fictional).
At one stage in Part 3 another lover when leaving says it has been “like living with the sad ghost of a failed comedian” – which struck me as very apposite and also that he author was aware of the reaction he was aiming to provoke.
So overall I felt this was a really ambitious debut – one which tried to be different and largely succeeded on its own terms. Exactly the sort of novel and author the Desmond Elliott prize should be spotlighting.
April 22, 2022
For me, this was book six (of ten) from the 2022 Desmond Elliott Prize which is an award given to a debut novel.
There isn’t much of a plot in Hourglass: you could summarise it as “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to pieces and gradually recovers”. Neither the boy nor the girl are ever named: the book takes the form of a kind of prose poem written by him (I) to her (you). Whilst it might look short at 176 pages, it is actually even shorter than that because it is set out with a paragraph break between each sentence meaning quite a lot of white space. It has the feel of a piece of poetry (which is appropriate as the author’s previous publications have been collections of poems) and it is full of poetic observations phrased as only a poet would think of phrasing them.
Our narrator sees the world in an unusual way. Here’s a section from early on in the book that gives a flavour:
He’s the kind of man who wonders whether he will ever get to use the word “pratfall” out loud in conversation.
When I first started reading the book, I got quite excited. Our narrator is an unusual person with quite a few foibles but also with a unique way of looking at the world. And the way Goddard captures this character is carefully and imaginatively done - as I’ve already said, it’s clear a poet’s imagination is at work here.
The book darkens as it progresses (you probably guessed that from my plot summary at the start) and becomes uncomfortable to read in a few places. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, by the way, probably exactly the opposite because the opening chapters set you up to think one thing and then very gradually the rug is pulled from under your feet.
This is another strong debut novel on the Desmond Elliott long list.
There isn’t much of a plot in Hourglass: you could summarise it as “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy goes to pieces and gradually recovers”. Neither the boy nor the girl are ever named: the book takes the form of a kind of prose poem written by him (I) to her (you). Whilst it might look short at 176 pages, it is actually even shorter than that because it is set out with a paragraph break between each sentence meaning quite a lot of white space. It has the feel of a piece of poetry (which is appropriate as the author’s previous publications have been collections of poems) and it is full of poetic observations phrased as only a poet would think of phrasing them.
Our narrator sees the world in an unusual way. Here’s a section from early on in the book that gives a flavour:
That year I also spent some time relearning how to do simple maths I was taught in school.
Things seemed considerably harder from a distance.
One day I figured out the volume of a tennis ball that was sitting in the corner of my room and pinned my workings to the fridge.
More often than not, I’d sleep on the sofa.
It was next to the biggest window in the flat so that way I got woken up by the light of the sun and by the sound of the man who handed out free newspapers.
I liked to look at the floor in the kitchen. It was stained in a way that was interesting to me.
Once I thought the stains looked exactly like something in particular, but I forgot what it was and could never recover the image.
He’s the kind of man who wonders whether he will ever get to use the word “pratfall” out loud in conversation.
When I first started reading the book, I got quite excited. Our narrator is an unusual person with quite a few foibles but also with a unique way of looking at the world. And the way Goddard captures this character is carefully and imaginatively done - as I’ve already said, it’s clear a poet’s imagination is at work here.
The book darkens as it progresses (you probably guessed that from my plot summary at the start) and becomes uncomfortable to read in a few places. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, by the way, probably exactly the opposite because the opening chapters set you up to think one thing and then very gradually the rug is pulled from under your feet.
This is another strong debut novel on the Desmond Elliott long list.
July 29, 2023
“Perché non c’è dopo. Il dopo non arriva mai“
Clessidra, scritto in paragrafi brevi, anche di una sola frase, sposa la forza della poesia con il ritmo della narrativa, e il risultato è una storia d'amore silenziosamente straziante.
“Sei andata via da cinque anni e non so dove sei. E non so dove sei“
Costituita da tre parti distinte - il prima, il durante e il dopo - (un ragazzo incontra una ragazza se ne innamora e poi la perde) la storia entra ed esce dal tempo, illustrando il flusso di coscienza del narratore senza nome partendo dal momento in cui posa gli occhi sulla cosa più bella che avesse mai visto.
“Non la persona più bella che avessi mai visto. La cosa più bella.
Che è una categoria più ampia.
Miliardi di persone si annidano tra migliaia e migliaia di miliardi di cose”
Keiran Goddard ha una scrittura malinconica che segue l'arco del romanticismo e del dolore entrando in simbiosi con i sensi e con tutti noi attraverso quel "tu" che ci livella , ricordandoci anche con ironia, che quando soffriamo per la fine di un amore facciamo le stesse cose.
Ci aggrappiamo ai ricordi alla quotidianità e cerchiamo ovunque comprensione, come antidoto alla solitudine
Insofferenti, spaventati e forse un po’ patetici
Clessidra, scritto in paragrafi brevi, anche di una sola frase, sposa la forza della poesia con il ritmo della narrativa, e il risultato è una storia d'amore silenziosamente straziante.
“Sei andata via da cinque anni e non so dove sei. E non so dove sei“
Costituita da tre parti distinte - il prima, il durante e il dopo - (un ragazzo incontra una ragazza se ne innamora e poi la perde) la storia entra ed esce dal tempo, illustrando il flusso di coscienza del narratore senza nome partendo dal momento in cui posa gli occhi sulla cosa più bella che avesse mai visto.
“Non la persona più bella che avessi mai visto. La cosa più bella.
Che è una categoria più ampia.
Miliardi di persone si annidano tra migliaia e migliaia di miliardi di cose”
Keiran Goddard ha una scrittura malinconica che segue l'arco del romanticismo e del dolore entrando in simbiosi con i sensi e con tutti noi attraverso quel "tu" che ci livella , ricordandoci anche con ironia, che quando soffriamo per la fine di un amore facciamo le stesse cose.
Ci aggrappiamo ai ricordi alla quotidianità e cerchiamo ovunque comprensione, come antidoto alla solitudine
Insofferenti, spaventati e forse un po’ patetici
September 28, 2022
This brief fiction was too spare for me. It's not a flaw in the book--it's a deliberate choice the author makes so I can't fault him for it--but personally it left me feeling unprepared and baffled about what I was reading, for longer than I wanted to be. It was like finding myself on a sports team and already out on the field and not knowing the rules. In the beginning, until I came to the phrase "she liked to f* me with a candle", I thought I was reading a novel narrated by a child because the diction was simple enough to lead me in that direction.
It's like a lattice of a story. Other readers will be able to make the correct intuitive leaps across the empty spaces and derive more full meanings and see the patterns, more than I was able to.
It's like a lattice of a story. Other readers will be able to make the correct intuitive leaps across the empty spaces and derive more full meanings and see the patterns, more than I was able to.
November 8, 2022
Hourglass is a collection of short diary entries disguised as a lyrical poem disguised as a novella. The book is written in short pragraphs (usually less than 3 sentences, if that) arranged in very short chapters that tell stories of modern love and loss, Characters remain sparsely described and largely unnamed (or the names don't matter) which leads to this being more of an impressionistic art piece rather than a book.
I really wanted to like Hourglass but I don't think I was the correct audience for it as experimental writing isn't quite for me. That said, I found it engaging and refreshing in its brevity. Reading this book felt like going to a slam poetry night where I didn't have much in common with the speaker but could see how the material could be emotionally poignant for other people. This was similar to the experience I had reading Ocean Vuong's on Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, where some portions felt both over and underwritten in a way that didn't land with me but that I've seen other people enjoy.
Recommended if you are interested in millennial love and heartbreak, enjoy lyrical styles akin to Ocean Vuong, and are ok with "no plot just vibes" when it comes to your novellas.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review!
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/PzkEfMJg21M
I really wanted to like Hourglass but I don't think I was the correct audience for it as experimental writing isn't quite for me. That said, I found it engaging and refreshing in its brevity. Reading this book felt like going to a slam poetry night where I didn't have much in common with the speaker but could see how the material could be emotionally poignant for other people. This was similar to the experience I had reading Ocean Vuong's on Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous, where some portions felt both over and underwritten in a way that didn't land with me but that I've seen other people enjoy.
Recommended if you are interested in millennial love and heartbreak, enjoy lyrical styles akin to Ocean Vuong, and are ok with "no plot just vibes" when it comes to your novellas.
Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review!
More thoughts here: https://youtu.be/PzkEfMJg21M
February 10, 2023
How few words are needed to explain the unexplainable sometimes is beyond me. In the hands of the right author (Keiran Goddard) the most sparse prose (nothing but disjointed sentences on just about 200 pages) can be crafted into a heart-wrenching tale about the magic of finding the love of your life and the unspeakable pain of true heartbreak (Hourglass).
I got the book and, less than 24h later, I had read - and maybe I had teared up in public once or twice along the way 🥲
Now look. I don’t think this book can be loved by everyone. But if you’re in for experimental writing styles à la "Bluets", weird little books, and big emotions squished into the tiniest sentences, then "Hourglass" is for you. I really, really enjoyed it - so maybe you will, too 😊
Thank you Europa Editions for the review copy.
I got the book and, less than 24h later, I had read - and maybe I had teared up in public once or twice along the way 🥲
Now look. I don’t think this book can be loved by everyone. But if you’re in for experimental writing styles à la "Bluets", weird little books, and big emotions squished into the tiniest sentences, then "Hourglass" is for you. I really, really enjoyed it - so maybe you will, too 😊
Thank you Europa Editions for the review copy.
January 1, 2025
bad start to my new year. narrator was so weird i thought maybe he was a cat. very strange
February 7, 2023
A very poetic little book about desire, heartbreak & the passage of time told through the lens of a strange man full of big feelings. Loved!
March 9, 2022
An admirably weird novel, but one that I wanted to darker. Instead, it was just sad. Which was fine, but just sad. Obviously.
February 24, 2023
I can honestly say I have never read anything like this!
It is weirdly addictive ready but to describe it it’s essentially a poetic collection of ramblings and thoughts that come to the narrator about love and his life intertwined with it. There’s not really a story, in the truest sense of a beginning, middle and end with a plot but it was interesting to read something different….. just not sure it’s really for me, once was enough, thanks.
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.
It is weirdly addictive ready but to describe it it’s essentially a poetic collection of ramblings and thoughts that come to the narrator about love and his life intertwined with it. There’s not really a story, in the truest sense of a beginning, middle and end with a plot but it was interesting to read something different….. just not sure it’s really for me, once was enough, thanks.
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.
May 5, 2022
I'm sure there will be many people who don't appreciate this novel and I understand it. Hourglass is as much about the style as it is about the substance. However, I think the style only makes the narrative more substantial. If it's a struggle to get used to the format then that's only because it's a struggle to see things from another person's point of view. Especially somebody who sees the world in the way our narrator does. The style works to strengthen the idea that this is a very unique story and it might take a bit of effort to be able to engage. Like life, if you're willing to put in the work then you'll find this story is all too familiar. A story about love.
Normally, I'd be put off a book that was described as a love story. Especially a modern love story. It just puts me in mind of certain books that I didn't get on with. This one proved too difficult to ignore and I'm incredibly pleased that I got over my stubbornness. Yes, this is a love story but it's so much more than that. This is a novel about a universal experience told in a beautifully poetic way. Spoiler alert: it's not a story that ends with a happily ever after. This is a modern love story where nothing really goes well.
It is split into 3 sections: boy meets girl; boy and girl grow apart; boy tries to get over girl. Although, it's not quite as simple as all that. It is told from the point of view of an unnamed man who lives an odd life. He writes bizarre essays that he tries, unsuccessfully, to get published in various magazines. She is an editor who actually likes one of his pieces. She has also written four slim books that very few people have read. The pair start seeing more of each other and eventually fall into an awkward love. Until she falls out of it. Leaving our narrator alone in that place in-between love and heartbreak.
What is so wonderful about this story is that it is so familiar. Yes, the characters may be a bit odd but who can't understand that feeling of loving someone who no longer loves you? A feeling that is paradoxically unique and universal at the same time. When you find yourself in a dark world that you don't think you'll ever get out of but a world that so many people have been in at some point. I don't think I've ever read anything that manages to capture that feeling in such a perfect way. The narrator is extreme but he represents something that most people will be able to empathise with.
He is one of the all-too-familiar socially inept narrators that we see in books everywhere these days but he is also the best narrator for a story like this. He has such a blunt but witty way of speaking. You could sort of fall in love with him despite being well aware of just how difficult it would be living with him. He has such a unique worldview and approaches problems in a very original way. Whether that is cutting holes in his t-shirt so he can attend a funeral or behaving inappropriately in public. Though his behaviour makes perfect sense to him and, for a little while, to her. That is what makes the first third of the book so perfect. You see two people who just understand each other. But you slowly start to realise it's not all as perfect as it seems.
That is what love basically is. Finding somebody who understands you and fits into your world. A world that Goddard expertly creates. The language in Hourglass is utterly mesmerising. It isn't quite a novel nor is it poetry. Rather, it sits somewhere in the middle. The narrative plays out as you'd expect but there is a lot of artistic licence and lyricism along the way. Written as a stream of consciousness, it takes you on an emotional journey that feels very human. There is plenty of disgusting and uncomfortable description. It's a very sensory experience that draws you in. You get the feeling that you've stepped inside somebody else's world. You get to experience love and the aftermath of love from somebody else's perspective.
I've never read a book like this and I am obsessed. It captured me from the start and definitely won't leave me any time soon.
Normally, I'd be put off a book that was described as a love story. Especially a modern love story. It just puts me in mind of certain books that I didn't get on with. This one proved too difficult to ignore and I'm incredibly pleased that I got over my stubbornness. Yes, this is a love story but it's so much more than that. This is a novel about a universal experience told in a beautifully poetic way. Spoiler alert: it's not a story that ends with a happily ever after. This is a modern love story where nothing really goes well.
It is split into 3 sections: boy meets girl; boy and girl grow apart; boy tries to get over girl. Although, it's not quite as simple as all that. It is told from the point of view of an unnamed man who lives an odd life. He writes bizarre essays that he tries, unsuccessfully, to get published in various magazines. She is an editor who actually likes one of his pieces. She has also written four slim books that very few people have read. The pair start seeing more of each other and eventually fall into an awkward love. Until she falls out of it. Leaving our narrator alone in that place in-between love and heartbreak.
What is so wonderful about this story is that it is so familiar. Yes, the characters may be a bit odd but who can't understand that feeling of loving someone who no longer loves you? A feeling that is paradoxically unique and universal at the same time. When you find yourself in a dark world that you don't think you'll ever get out of but a world that so many people have been in at some point. I don't think I've ever read anything that manages to capture that feeling in such a perfect way. The narrator is extreme but he represents something that most people will be able to empathise with.
He is one of the all-too-familiar socially inept narrators that we see in books everywhere these days but he is also the best narrator for a story like this. He has such a blunt but witty way of speaking. You could sort of fall in love with him despite being well aware of just how difficult it would be living with him. He has such a unique worldview and approaches problems in a very original way. Whether that is cutting holes in his t-shirt so he can attend a funeral or behaving inappropriately in public. Though his behaviour makes perfect sense to him and, for a little while, to her. That is what makes the first third of the book so perfect. You see two people who just understand each other. But you slowly start to realise it's not all as perfect as it seems.
That is what love basically is. Finding somebody who understands you and fits into your world. A world that Goddard expertly creates. The language in Hourglass is utterly mesmerising. It isn't quite a novel nor is it poetry. Rather, it sits somewhere in the middle. The narrative plays out as you'd expect but there is a lot of artistic licence and lyricism along the way. Written as a stream of consciousness, it takes you on an emotional journey that feels very human. There is plenty of disgusting and uncomfortable description. It's a very sensory experience that draws you in. You get the feeling that you've stepped inside somebody else's world. You get to experience love and the aftermath of love from somebody else's perspective.
I've never read a book like this and I am obsessed. It captured me from the start and definitely won't leave me any time soon.
February 27, 2022
Hourglass is a novel about heartbreak and time that straddles the line between prose and poetry. A narrator speaks to someone who broke his heart, thinking of the past, present, and future, and examining what love means and how to deal with losing it. Not much happens, but also a whole love affair starts, continues, ends, and then is looked back upon.
The book is melancholy and at times dark, but also has observational wit, particularly in the fake titles of articles the narrator has written. The narrative voice is distinctive and the style blends poetry and prose in a way that makes the short book very readable, if sad, as you get an insight into the narrator's head. It lulls you into reading and suddenly you find you've read a lot of it. If you like book-length, prose-like poetry that captures a feeling and vaguely a story, then give Hourglass a go.
The book is melancholy and at times dark, but also has observational wit, particularly in the fake titles of articles the narrator has written. The narrative voice is distinctive and the style blends poetry and prose in a way that makes the short book very readable, if sad, as you get an insight into the narrator's head. It lulls you into reading and suddenly you find you've read a lot of it. If you like book-length, prose-like poetry that captures a feeling and vaguely a story, then give Hourglass a go.
March 16, 2023
Respect to the author who turns poetry into a novel and conveys so viscerally the pain we feel when losing someone. In this case, the narrator strikes me as possibly on the spectrum in his quirks and obsessions but possibly his inner life is simply very vivid. His story is of the deliciousness of new love and acceptance and the subsequent cooling of the love over time. In a way it is a coming of age story.
September 20, 2023
This book was sickening, had me screaming every 2 pages.
I love how he is so in love to the point that it's pathetic and it makes me hope that I never love someone so much for it to ruin me like this. He is just so sad and so in love where it's so endearing to the point of being pathetic and quite self pitying/victim mentality.
I love how he is so in love to the point that it's pathetic and it makes me hope that I never love someone so much for it to ruin me like this. He is just so sad and so in love where it's so endearing to the point of being pathetic and quite self pitying/victim mentality.
September 6, 2023
Am interesting piece and read. It feels as though you’re reading diary inserts from a man about his life, love and loss. It was a weird piece I must admit but parts were enjoyable at times. Just not my favourite read.
February 28, 2022
A modern love story that is realistic and the characters are relatable. I loved the very descriptive thoughts of the main character, it made it a very addictive read.
December 2, 2022
“Do you think the brain can really tell the difference between losing something it has had and losing something that it wanted?”
February 26, 2022
An hourglass is an interesting piece to tell you the time. You can see how much time has passed and how much time is left. The past, the present and the future are shown at the same moment. Yet, you cannot know if the amount of sand that is still in the upper part will actually be there for you, maybe the hourglass is turned before it runs out and thus, the past comes back. The hourglass is concrete, on the one hand; on the other, it is the incorporation of time itself, never-ending and thus, volatile. For humans, life is a race against the clock. The sand is slowly tripping and just by looking in the mirror, we can see that another day, another week, another year has passed without us noticing.
In Kieran Goddard’s debut novel “Hourglass”, a man is pondering about love. The whole novel is a stream of consciousness addressed to the man he loved in the past and whom he will love forever. They only had a brief time together and their love has no future. It is like sand, that cannot be stopped from falling from one glass into the other, it is just running through the narrator’s fingers. He can feel it and yet not stop it from vanishing.
There is not real plot, it is a meditation on life, a yearning for love, the longing for bonding with other people which never works. A dense and focussed narration just like looking through a keyhole and observing an extract of life.
Despite the poetic language and strong dark emotion, the novel did not really touch me. Maybe it was the lack of actual plot that I missed, somehow the text seems to be more like an extended poem rather than a novella.
In Kieran Goddard’s debut novel “Hourglass”, a man is pondering about love. The whole novel is a stream of consciousness addressed to the man he loved in the past and whom he will love forever. They only had a brief time together and their love has no future. It is like sand, that cannot be stopped from falling from one glass into the other, it is just running through the narrator’s fingers. He can feel it and yet not stop it from vanishing.
There is not real plot, it is a meditation on life, a yearning for love, the longing for bonding with other people which never works. A dense and focussed narration just like looking through a keyhole and observing an extract of life.
Despite the poetic language and strong dark emotion, the novel did not really touch me. Maybe it was the lack of actual plot that I missed, somehow the text seems to be more like an extended poem rather than a novella.
May 17, 2023
In 'Clessidra' si racconta l'incontro, la convivenza e la separazione di due individui non ben definiti. Lui, originale, eccentrico, strano e aspirante scrittore si innamora di lei, altrettanto strana e originale donna che ricambia il suo affetto, accompagnandolo in un percorso di crescita condiviso. Poi accade qualcosa di indefinito e le strade si separano, portando Lui alla disperazione e alla non curanza di sè, e Lei alla rinascita e ad una nuova vita.
Questo breve romanzo narra l'esistenza di due persone attraverso brevi frasi e rapidi concetti; mediante questo escamotage stilistico, simile ad un flusso di pensieri, la vita della coppia nasce, cresce e muore sotto gli occhi curiosi del lettore.
Non accade praticamente nulla in tutto il romanzo, ma proprio questo stile narrativo e la velocità con cui si legge, le pagine di questo libro risultano sorprendenti e curiose.
Non è un libro che consiglierei, ma è indubbiamente una lettura originale e interessante per la forma stilistica scelta dall'autore.
Questo breve romanzo narra l'esistenza di due persone attraverso brevi frasi e rapidi concetti; mediante questo escamotage stilistico, simile ad un flusso di pensieri, la vita della coppia nasce, cresce e muore sotto gli occhi curiosi del lettore.
Non accade praticamente nulla in tutto il romanzo, ma proprio questo stile narrativo e la velocità con cui si legge, le pagine di questo libro risultano sorprendenti e curiose.
Non è un libro che consiglierei, ma è indubbiamente una lettura originale e interessante per la forma stilistica scelta dall'autore.
July 1, 2025
When i purchased this book I did not realize it was told in small passages consisting of a few sentences and was surprised to see the entire book is written that way. I dove in to see what it would offer and was surprised by it—I am still unsure by it—it’s strangely addictive, strange and bizarre at times, yet profound and fascinating. It was poetic at times and other times it was a string of the narrator’s consciousness told without any hesitation or concern for judgment. It uncovers what falling in love, being in love and losing love is like on one’s psyche and heart. The narrator gives no apologies for being his truly authentic self and the ragging thoughts he battles daily.
July 4, 2022
2.5 rounded down
I read this book because it was on the 2022 longlist for the Desmond Elliot Prize for first novels. It was not a book for me. The book has a relatively young (in comparison to me) adult male telling about falling in love and then losing her because of his immaturity. I couldn't relate and didn't want to. Writing was perfectly fine. Rating is solely related to my inability to relate and be entertained in any sort of way.
I read this book because it was on the 2022 longlist for the Desmond Elliot Prize for first novels. It was not a book for me. The book has a relatively young (in comparison to me) adult male telling about falling in love and then losing her because of his immaturity. I couldn't relate and didn't want to. Writing was perfectly fine. Rating is solely related to my inability to relate and be entertained in any sort of way.
December 28, 2022
Can certainly see why the publisher put Lena Dunham's quotation on the publicity materials (often in very large font). The protagonist is in the UK, however, and male.
It's... not bad. Some very good lines, but ultimately neither as moving, original, or interesting as I'd hoped. A shame, because I'd heard good things. Guess I'm just not the right audience for this.
It's... not bad. Some very good lines, but ultimately neither as moving, original, or interesting as I'd hoped. A shame, because I'd heard good things. Guess I'm just not the right audience for this.
February 7, 2023
Okay first off I was overjoyed to find this book in person but let me tell you it is a strange one! I read a little to cason outloud and he agreed The author is a poet as well and I think you really pick up on that throughout the book. Nevertheless, I’m glad I read it because it is funny and moving and sad in its own little way!
April 23, 2023
So I had no bloody clue what was going on half the time but I feel like I understood the meaning of the book and things like that. And for some reason the last line got me and this bloody book had me crying like 2/3 through and I have no clue why I could of been because of the poetry or so meaning behind the words but who knows. But the book made me think of tolerate it by Taylor Swift so it gets an extra star.
June 25, 2023
I has mixed feelings about this book. Although I admired the writer’s attempt at sustaining a love story through prose, I found the character - and the book itself - weird. It is an oftentimes rambling dialogue by a depressed, lost man to his girlfriend, who, at one point tells him that living with him is like “living with the sad ghost of a failed comedian.” At one point, he states, “I will write a book that people actually want to read…” Well, good luck with that! For those who read Hourglass, wouldn’t it have been a great idea to put an exclamation point after the title!? (Inside joke.)
July 26, 2022
3.5 stars
September 30, 2022
3.75 but rounded up. Finished in one day- a quick read. Unreliable narrator but funny and thoughtful. A wonderful meditation on the phases of life, love, and family.
March 5, 2023
fucking annoying mc
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