DANI SHAPIRO is the author of the memoirs Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times and has been broadcast on This American Life. Shapiro was recently Oprah Winfrey's guest on Super Soul Sunday. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, the New School, and Wesleyan University; she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Shapiro lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.
Praise for 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... Brutal honesty is the bread and butter of
the marriage memoir, yet Shapiro still manages to make her husband
sound quirky and tenacious in the manner of the best romantic
comedy leads. And her prose has a way of making even mundane
disappointments feel portentous and universal...by the end of her
short book, we want to know what will happen next."
--The New York Times Book Review
"In this touching and intimate memoir... Shapiro beautifully weaves
together her own moving language and a commonplace book's worth of
perfect quotes from others.
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"To write openly about an enduring intimate relationship requires
courage and tact... In this compelling account of her 18-year
marriage, Shapiro carefully exposes the vulnerabilities that have
subtly begun to surface within the relationship...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) "These memories form a reality
that is as diaphanous, fragile and as surprisingly resilient as a
spider web. Hourglass is not only a profound and moving reflection
on Shapiro's marriage, but on all marriages."
--Bookpage "[Shapiro] has never written anything as raw, dark, or
brave as Hourglass... a penetrating meditation... Hourglass is a
stalwart witness to the erosions of time's tides that, in being
stalwart, it also wishes to stand against.''
--The Boston Globe
"A meditation that's intimate, wide-ranging, funny and smart."
--Portland Press Herald "Dani Shapiro presents a sharp look at the
realities of marriage. She does so in delicate strokes, never
seeming self-conscious. With a combination of engaged storytelling
and what remains carefully unsaid, Shapiro creates an abstract
intimacy that allows the reader into her experience... It is the
very book that should be given to a young couple at the beginning
of their relationship."
--Interview Magazine
"That delicate, ferocious act of unsweeping ourselves from the
river of time and unplundering its instants is what Dani Shapiro
explores with uncommon elegance in Hourglass-- at once a memoir and
a quiet manifesto for how, despite the cavalcade of losses and the
exponential narrowing of possibility marking the passage of the
years, it remains possible to have an expansive and creatively
invigorating existence. In Shapiro's virtuosic hands, time
compresses and expands -- an accordion playing the sorrowful yet
redemptive melody that is life."
--Brain Pickings "Shapiro's honesty and devotion to her craft are
impossible to detangle from her love of family....This potent
memoir is a graceful meditation on the fragile balance of time,
love, and loss. It's an excellent entry point for Shapiro's
poignant and personal oeuvre. So start with this latest, and take
it from there."
--Signature Reads
Ask a Question About this Product More... |