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.
