Human Hours

Originally, Barnett intended to call the book The Accursed Questions.^[1] Barnett first heard the term from poet Ilya Kaminsky, in reference to the "huge questions of humanity" addressed by "nineteenth-century Russian novelists".

Barnett drew inspiration from Ellen Bryant Voigt's collection Headwaters and Samuel Beckett's 1961 play Happy Days during the book's composition.^[2]

A review in Publishers Weekly referred to the book as "elegantly understated".^[3]