The Avian Hourglass - by Lindsey Drager (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

At once an ode to birds, an elegy to space, and a journey into the most haunted and uncanny corners of the human mind, The Avian Hourglass showcases Lindsey Drager's signature brilliance in a stunning, surrealist novel for fans of Jesse Ball, Helen Oyeyemi, Yoko Ogawa, and Shirley Jackson

The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of becoming a radio astronomer struggles to raise the triplets she gave birth to as a gestational surrogate, whose parents were killed in a car accident. Surrounded by characters who wear wings, memorize etymologies, and build gigantic bird nests, and bound to this town in which young adults must decide between two binary worldviews--either YES or NO--the woman is haunted by the old fable of the Girl in Glass Vessel, a cautionary tale about prying back the façade of one's world.

When events begin to unfold that suggest a local legend about the town being the whole of the universe might be true, the woman finds her understanding of her own life-and her reality-slipping through her fingers. A reflection on mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass asks readers to reframe how they conceive of a series of concentric understandings of home: the globe, one's country, one's town, one's family, and one's own body.

Review Quotes

"Depending on the reader, The Avian Hourglass is a book that one could spend a couple days with or a couple years and still be satisfied or unsatisfied depending on their wont. However far down the rabbit hole the reader wants to go, Drager's is a novel of surreal literary fiction that opens gateways to a world in which the reader can reflect, indefinitely, on many aspects of their own life."
--Independent Book Review, starred review

"It would be easy to describe The Avian Hourglass as 'haunting' or even 'dystopian, ' but neither of those words reflects the vastness of the longing that runs through it. This novel taps into a primordial solitude and its accompanying yearning...The Avian Hourglass is a splendid novel in which many of us will find ourselves, our obsessions, our lonelinesses, and even our sense of wonder."--BookBrowse
"At times, these musings are arresting--at others confusing--but perhaps all the more powerful for it. All in all, The Avian Hourglass is a compelling, intellectual, and emotionally-charged take on climate fiction."
--Sinister Wisdom

"Drager is adept at creating worlds that differ deeply from ours yet are consistent and engaging, demonstrating her substantial literary talents."
--Pop Matters

"The Avian Hourglass is splendidly odd and arresting. Drager establishes her themes of loss and duplication and catastrophe and estrangement and connection and sends them orbiting perfectly around each other, round after round, in an orrery of grieving and wonder."
--Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations and The Illumination

"Drager's The Avian Hourglass has the mingled timbre of Redonnet & Brautigan: lucid, injured, hope-drunk. It parcels out the world in queries."
--Jesse Ball, author of Census and The Divers' Game