The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager
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 the intersecting crises of mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the exponentially growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass culminates in a figurative and literal twist that 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.
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Paperback
ISBN: 9781950539970
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 the intersecting crises of mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the exponentially growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass culminates in a figurative and literal twist that 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.
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Paperback
ISBN: 9781950539970
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 the intersecting crises of mental health, the climate emergency, political polarization, and the exponentially growing reliance on technology, The Avian Hourglass culminates in a figurative and literal twist that 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.
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Paperback
ISBN: 9781950539970
PRAISE FOR THE AVIAN HOURGLASS
"A speculative novel told in fragments peels back the surface of a small town’s reality ... this spare and striking novel is what comes next."
—Kirkus Reviews
"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 Hourglassis 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’sThe Avian Hourglasshas 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
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lindsey Drager is the author of three novels: The Sorrow Proper (Dzanc, 2015); The Lost Daughter Collective (Dzanc, 2017); and The Archive of Alternate Endings (Dzanc, 2019). These books have won a Shirley Jackson Award, been finalists for two Lambda Literary Awards, and are currently being translated into Spanish and Italian. Recent fiction can be found or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. A 2020 NEA Fellowship recipient in Prose and winner of the 2022 Bard Fiction Prize, she is an assistant professor at the University of Utah and the fiction editor of West Branch.
