A review by nanajo
Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro

5.0

Marriage, such a huge subject, is eloquently captured in this memoir of only 145 pages. Reading it as I celebrated my own 30 years of marriage, I paused frequently throughout the book to reflect. “How do we make lifelong commitments in the face of identities that are continuously shifting and commit ourselves for all time when the self is so often in flux? What happens to the love in the face of the unexpected, in the face of disappointment and compromise?” Tough questions to ask myself in the privacy of my heart and mind, I admire the courage of Shapiro to share hers with a world of readers. I saw myself and many women reflected in her honesty. The joy & fear of raising children. Aging parents. Shapiro’s description of “a scorched landscape of grief” made her & I shudder. I too keep special little books containing the words of others. I had no idea there was a word to describe them; commonplace book, a “thinker's journal”. Shapiro’s criterion “the words must pierce me, stop me, so that I can go no further until I write them down-until I make them mine.” She introduced me to the belief of Donald Hall, that third things are essential to marriages; something “that provide a a site of joint rapture or contentment.” I will seek out the children’s book by Michael Foreman “Fortunately, Unfortunately” that she writes of as an introduction to my grandchildren about the great adventures that may arrive on the heels of life’s curve balls.