Hourglass

A FEBRUARY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICKLONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZEA short, lyrical debut novel about love, loss, work, time, and the unquenchable desire for connection with othersfor fans of Jenny Offill, Mieko Kawakami, David Szalay and Sheila HetiThe 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*ckan 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 eveningLena Dunham