Hourglass

Time, Memory, Marriage

By: Dani Shapiro

Narrated by: Dani Shapiro

The best-selling novelist and memoirist delivers her most intimate and powerful work: a piercing, life-affirming memoir about marriage and memory, about the frailty and elasticity of our most essential bonds, and about the accretion, over time, of both sorrow and love.

Hourglass is an inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time—abraded, strengthened, shaped in miraculous and sometimes terrifying ways by accident and experience. With courage and relentless honesty, Dani Shapiro opens the door to her house, her marriage, and her heart, and invites us to witness her own marital reckoning--a reckoning in which she confronts both the life she dreamed of and the life she made, and struggles to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.

What are the forces that shape our most elemental bonds? How do we make lifelong commitments in the face of identities that are continuously shifting, and commit ourselves for all time when the self is so often in flux? What happens to love in the face of the unexpected, in the face of disappointment and compromise—how do we wrest beauty from imperfection, find grace in the ordinary, desire what we have rather than what we lack? Drawing on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology, Shapiro writes gloriously of the joys and challenges of matrimonial life, in a luminous narrative that unfurls with urgent immediacy and sharp intelligence. Artful, intensely emotional work from one of our finest writers.

©2017 Dani Shapiro (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Compassionate, insightful, and powerfully honest, in Hourglass Dani Shapiro illuminates the deepest mysteries, contradictions, and consolations of so very much—love, memory, the people we used to be and the people we’ve become. In other words: life. I was absorbed by Hourglass and consoled by it, too. It’s a beautiful book by a writer of rare talent.”—Cheryl Strayed

“Gorgeous, stunning, extraordinary— life-changing.” —Will Schwalbe

“Rilke reminds us that “There are multitudes of people, but there are many more faces, because each person has several of them.” And how do we, moment after elusive moment, marry then continue to change and grow yet still accommodate these multitudes in one another? This is just one of the piercingly compelling questions Dani Shapiro explores in her masterfully rendered new memoir. Written with erudition, hard-earned wisdom, and sensual grace, Hourglass is a fearless and lovely mosaic of those very fragments that make life worth living, the only one we get. I adore this book.” —Andre Dubus III

Visceral & Lovely

Any additional comments?

This book was a great listen. I appreciate the way that the author goes back and forth between the moments in her life.

Stunning

I found Hourglass, or it found me, at exactly the right moment. Shapiro is a master of the braided memoir. She has a poets heart, is a brave, and necessary artist. I loved this book.

Story ok, but the monotone narration drove me craz

The story was ok, a little too much jumping around and random thought inserts (but I suppose that style has become pretty popular as of late). But the thing that stuck out the most was the author's monotone melancholy voice. I almost couldn't finish the book with how it was read. No voice fluctuations or change of pace or anything, just sad monotone all the way through. I wish I could blame this fault in the narrator, but the fact that the narrator is the author means she wanted it read in this fashion.... Poor choice. Even if I hadn't listened to the book (or if it had a different narrator) I still probably wouldn't recommend it. Not interesting enough for me, and a little too doom and gloom in style (or maybe it was just her voice that made it seem like that).

Transience and Permanence

Loved this book and Shapiro's peculiar juxtaposition of the lyrical with the ordinary, wrapping and winding like love itself through this vulnerable narrative.

An author who continues to risk. A book recommended especially for those of us who reject time as a construct.

Brava!

As always, sharp, intelligent and self aware.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This, more than any of her other writing, feels raw and honest. She's succeeded in weaving a story that is profoundly hers and yet universal.

Not too compelling

It was okay, but the sense I got was that the author was writing a memoir for a the sake of publishing another book. I did find one quote from it that I will probably keep around.

Touching and brave, beautifully written

Loved the back & forth manipulation of time, the metaphors that accompany so much of the story bring to life the challenges that time brings to an enduring relationship.

significance of the overlooked moments revealed

The writer grants the reader access to the weaving room where the fabric of her writing life is spun. The reading itself however, is done without much feeling. This has the benefit of letting the listener ascribe weight to various events but left me wanting the author to allow her emotions to be somewhere other than just or of reach.

Great Synthesis of Memoir meets Philisophy

This book is definitely worth listening to several times or more to catch some of the nuggets of deep thought and self-reflection and analysis of the stages of life as it unfolds. Free will or not, we all are on a certain path for better or worse.

The insights and poignant .descriptions are not to be missed. The only thing that might rub a reader in the wrong way are the rivulets of the upper-middle-class lifestyle among such deep, often bittersweet, if not melancholic, life dramas. While these themes are timeless and class-less, it is sometimes hard to swallow pain and sorrow playing out amidst little descriptive pieces (e.g., a "Patagonia sweater") and then there are the history of what to most Americans would be lavish vacations.

A little disappointed...

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

No, unfortunately. There were a few parts that were okay, but where was the story? I wanted more truth, more reality. I know what it's like to be married, and I think she would have revealed more about her marriage. The reality of the sex, the realness of feeling like shit and having sex anyway, the real feelings. Did she want more kids? Did she not? What else might she have wanted to be in life? I want to hear more about Dani, the woman. I think she would have been more real if she knew her husband wouldn't have read it. IMHO, I think she should have written it in anyway.

Would you ever listen to anything by Dani Shapiro again?

Yes, I like her work. This one didn't do it for me though. When it ended, I thought. What? Is it over?

Would you listen to another book narrated by Dani Shapiro?

Yes

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No