Hourglass is a very good book by a capable writer. Will be reading more from Keiran Goddard. Lots in here for everybody to enjoy.

Hourglass is a little masterpiece, a prose poem about the arc of a love affair, as Paul Simon might say..

It’s easy to outline flaws in a book, but difficult to convey the varieties of expression that make up near-perfection and the latter is the case here. There are such precise insights, such a range of attitudes and emotions, and humour of all kinds.

It’s pretty unique and a review cannot do it justice.

A modern love story that is realistic and the characters are relatable. I loved the very descriptive thoughts of the main character, it made it a very addictive read.

This was such an interesting one to read. As soon as I started, I wanted to know more about the characters and read it enthusiastically, waiting for the story to develop. But it never really did! It’s more of an inner monologue around events and other characters without the depth of relationships and actions that might come from a story. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy reading it, I found the style of writing instantly engaging, but to me, it never really got going as a book.

I loved this unique love story and the way the author brought me to tears and had me laughing in the space of a few lines. It's rare that a book captures the utter weirdness of us as people and our strange way of inhabiting relationships. Highly recommend.

I can honestly say I have never read anything like this!
It is weirdly addictive ready but to describe it it’s essentially a poetic collection of ramblings and thoughts that come to the narrator about love and his life intertwined with it. There’s not really a story, in the truest sense of a beginning, middle and end with a plot but it was interesting to read something different….. just not sure it’s really for me, once was enough, thanks.

Hourglass is a novel about heartbreak and time that straddles the line between prose and poetry. A narrator speaks to someone who broke his heart, thinking of the past, present, and future, and examining what love means and how to deal with losing it. Not much happens, but also a whole love affair starts, continues, ends, and then is looked back upon.

The book is melancholy and at times dark, but also has observational wit, particularly in the fake titles of articles the narrator has written. The narrative voice is distinctive and the style blends poetry and prose in a way that makes the short book very readable, if sad, as you get an insight into the narrator's head. It lulls you into reading and suddenly you find you've read a lot of it. If you like book-length, prose-like poetry that captures a feeling and vaguely a story, then give Hourglass a go.

This is a verse novel like I've never read before. Funny, dark, and authentic. However, after a while I wondered if I would maybe have preferred it to be a poetry collection with seperate poems, because I wasn't attached to the characters enough to be deeply interested in the plot. Good poetry though!

An hourglass is an interesting piece to tell you the time. You can see how much time has passed and how much time is left. The past, the present and the future are shown at the same moment. Yet, you cannot know if the amount of sand that is still in the upper part will actually be there for you, maybe the hourglass is turned before it runs out and thus, the past comes back. The hourglass is concrete, on the one hand; on the other, it is the incorporation of time itself, never-ending and thus, volatile. For humans, life is a race against the clock. The sand is slowly tripping and just by looking in the mirror, we can see that another day, another week, another year has passed without us noticing.

In Kieran Goddard’s debut novel “Hourglass”, a man is pondering about love. The whole novel is a stream of consciousness addressed to the man he loved in the past and whom he will love forever. They only had a brief time together and their love has no future. It is like sand, that cannot be stopped from falling from one glass into the other, it is just running through the narrator’s fingers. He can feel it and yet not stop it from vanishing.

There is not real plot, it is a meditation on life, a yearning for love, the longing for bonding with other people which never works. A dense and focussed narration just like looking through a keyhole and observing an extract of life.

Despite the poetic language and strong dark emotion, the novel did not really touch me. Maybe it was the lack of actual plot that I missed, somehow the text seems to be more like an extended poem rather than a novella.