Hourglass
A 'beautiful, funny, profound' (New Statesman) debut novel about love and loss
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
A short, exquisite novel about love, loss and making sense of the world - as heartbreakingly moving as it is outrageous and funny
'A universal love story' Guardian
'Beautiful, funny, profound ... read it in one glowing session' New Statesman
'A book for anyone who ever has been or ever will be heartbroken. So that's everyone.' Hollie McNish
Love builds up little by little and that's why it makes people reach for words like root and sediment and other words to do with rocks and trees. But what about the dismantling? Does it happen that way too? Because it feels like it is happening much, much faster. And I am reaching for words like landslide and like wave and like storm ...
Exquisitely crafted, wildly imaginative and as darkly funny as it is moving, Hourglass is a revolutionary love story. It turns time upside down, combs the intimate wreckage of heartbreak for something universal, and asks what it means to lose what you love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Goddard's bracing and intimate debut novel (after the poetry collection Votive) charts a passionate love affair as well as its breakup and the painful aftermath. On one level, it reads like a letter: "You've been gone for five years and I do not know where you are," writes the unnamed narrator to his lover. The brief chapters, comprising short single-sentence paragraphs, could also be taken for diary entries, jottings that carom from flash floods of emotion ("You picked up your sunglasses and I was in pieces") to lyrical observations ("The sky looked like the inside of a cheap tent"). The format not only hints at the unnamed narrator's loneliness and sense of isolation but it also adds resonance. Ordinary sentences like "I know that you are right about that" gain an extra charge of significance by virtue of their isolation on the page. Elsewhere, imagery alludes to broader memories: "The large brown chair is the nest that you have chosen." At times, the weight given to small details blunts the overall impact, but their precision mostly makes up for it. In addition to poetry, Goddard's project brings to mind the atomized tweet-inspired novels of writers like Patricia Lockwood. Like a distinctly revealing internet thread, this will capture readers' attention.
