Hourglass

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

Dani Shapiro’s prose is elegant and crystal clear, the perfect vehicle for her fierce intelligence and curiosity about things that lurk just out of view. Hourglass is such a lovely book

Richard Russo

Reading this book was like skating across a perfect piece of ice and then slowly noticing the cracks. Dark, cold water shows through. We can’t see the depths. Be careful, Shapiro warns, be careful, but still she skates on in the fading light with remarkable beauty and grace

Jenny Offill

Poignant… Timeless… her prose has a way of making even mundane disappointments feel portentous and universal

The New York Times Book Review

The narrative demonstrates Shapiro’s finely tuned, poetic skills as a writer… A sharply observed and frequently moving memoir of marriage

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A searing, pared-down narrative. A love story through and through. Shapiro’s retelling of her marriage is both distinctive and painfully relatable.

Vogue