Hourglass Book Summary

In 'Hourglass,' Dani Shapiro explores the fleeting nature of time through a profound personal lens. The narrative weaves together memories of family, loss, and the passage of life, uncovering how moments shape our identity. Shapiro's exquisite prose captures the tension between yearning for the past and embracing the present. As she reflects on her own life, readers are invited to question their own relationship with time. This poignant journey leaves a lasting impression, urging us to savor every ticking second.

By Dani Shapiro

Published: 2018

"Time is both a gentle guide and a relentless thief, shaping our memories and futures in ways we can never truly grasp."

Book Review of Hourglass

The New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance delivers her most intimate and powerful work: a piercing, life-affirming memoir about marriage and memory, sorrow and love. • "A beautiful book by a writer of rare talent.”—Cheryl Strayed, bestselling author of WILD 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.

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Time is both a gentle guide and a relentless thief, shaping our memories and futures in ways we can never truly grasp.

Hourglass

By Dani Shapiro