an intriguing, multi-layered saga that Mrs Woolf would enjoy

books:


	• The Hours Michael Cunningham Picador, 2002 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 529 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Beautifully Written and Conceived

This is an exceptionally well crafted and well written novel, deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. The author ties together the stories of three very different women living in three very different time periods, but who share a common lineage. And, more importantly, the women share the ultimate quandary of the human condition: getting through the hours of the day in some meaningful way.

Suicide pervades all three stories. I don't agree that the book is ultimately a downer, especially given the affirming character of Clarissa, who seems to get through the hours in a positive and admirable way.

The most haunting story is that of Lara -- the 1950's housewife with the "perfect" husband and home who is deeply dissatisfied and alienated. Is the author holding her up as what-not-to-do, as a negative foil to Clarissa's more positive approach to life? Perhaps, though I find Lara somehow attractive and wish her story were more developed in the novel. Ms. Moore's performance of the character in the movie, which is largely faithful to the book, perhaps also influences me and makes the character more intriguing.

A first rate novel. The movie is also first rate. I recommend both.

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an intriguing, multi-layered saga that Mrs Woolf would enjoy

'The Hours' is certainly a unique, audacious piece of literature. The author attempts to dissect the enigmatic Virginia Woolf and her most famous creation, Mrs Dalloway, then projects the results into the lives of characters living in America many years later. Although the stories all hang together thanks to superlative prose, I'm not entirely sure what the author was trying to say about mankind (or womankind). I'm sort of left scratching my head, but smiling at the same time. I also found it to be a bit odd that nearly all the characters were gay or had some naughty near gay interlude. For me it almost 'The Hours' seem farcical.

Bottom line: certainly deserving of the Pulizer prize. Highly recommended.

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More than it's given credit for

After finishing "The Hours," I perused the critics' reviews on the back cover. I was sincerely disappointed that all the critics got out of the book was that Cunningham proves the relevance of literature in ordinary life. Cunningham's in-depth exploration of a day in the lives of three women examines much more profound themes, such as disappointment and satisfaction in daily life, the meaning of happiness, the need to "play a role" in order to continue regular social interaction, and the feeling of entrapment by one's life. All of these themes are sincerely considered, and while Cunningham uses Virginia Woolf as one of the means to achieve his ends, "The Hours" is a work that stands on its own.

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The Hours Review

Good book but in bad condition. They definitely did not take care of this one whereever it was stored

At Woolf's Door?

This is a downer of a book. Though it is beautifully written and the concept of using "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf as the template for the novel is a brilliant idea, the novel is depressing and deeply upsetting to read. Two suicides and a wannabe suicide are not what you want to encounter when you are depressed. What could have been a life-affirming book was doomed from the start. It's a lesson in how to squeeze the joy out of life and living, although the author would argue otherwise.
The three main characters inhabit three parallel stories in different eras: Clarissa Vaughan who is giving a party for her writer friend, Virginia Woolf who is in the midst of writing "Mrs. Dalloway" while trying to fend off her mental anguish, and Laura Brown who is fighting to retain her sanity while preparing a birthday party for her husband. Cunningham, like Woolf, is obsessed by the passage of time and time's inner and external adumbrations.
The highlight of Woolf's novel is the party Clarissa Dalloway has been preparing for all day. In "The Hours" it is the aftermath of the aborted party for Richard that Cunningham highlights. Is the lesson of "The Hours" that a poet has to die so we, the living, value our own lives more?
The only character who is appealing in the book is Julia, Clarissa's lover. Most of the characters are selfish, self-absorbed, desperate people. Some of them fear the hours going by out of their own mental instability. It's almost a casebook in various types of insanity. We read about exasperating, annoying people teetering on the edge of mental instability. Sexual ambiguity is a constant theme in the book. Two events in the novel have great impact and make Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Brown really perk up--when they kiss another woman. And, of course, Clarissa is in a long-time relationship with her lover Julia. Two sexually equivocal women are toppling out of their nests (homes) like birds falling out of their nests. Paradoxically, Cunningham has created real, three-dimensional characters.
Writing about ravaged people is almost as bad as reading about them. Like Hickey in "The Iceman Cometh" Cunningham has taken the kick out of the booze. Where is redemption in the book? We can wallow in the mental states of the deranged only so long before we slip into an abyss of melancholy ourselves.
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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare

The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

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