The Hours

published	November 1st 2002 by Picador
first published	1998
isbn	0312305060 (isbn13: 9780312305062)
pages	240
literary awards	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1999); PEN/Faulkner Award; 2000 IMPAC Dublin Award Nominee; 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
description	The Hours is both an homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life,...more [close] The Hours is both an homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to. Clarissa is to eventually realize: <blockquote> There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. </blockquote> As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern beveling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair. Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried [close]
date added	12-18-06 edit book

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Martine rated it:

03/31/08

bookshelves: film, gay-lesbian-different, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: those who love an intense look at life

Several years ago I had the fortune of watching the film adaptation of The Hours, which quite blew me away. It had scenes of such emotional resonance that I left the cinema quite upset. If I hadn't been with someone at the time, I probably would have locked myself up in a dark room to have a good cry. That's how profoundly Stephen Daldry's adaptation of the book affected me.

If the book affected me less than the film, that's probably because the film had ruined the surprises for me. Th...more

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Syd rated it:

06/17/07

bookshelves: drama, favorite, fiction, finished

Read in February, 2003

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is an emotional journey into the hearts of three women. Three women who loved life but were unsettled by the finality of each hour and the limited time we are given to truly enjoy it’s gifts. When I received the book as a gift over the holidays, I’d never heard of it or the movie based on the novel. As I saw trailers for the movie and read praise for the book, I expected it to be a good novel. I did not expect it to touch me in such a profound way. I’ve tal...more Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is an emotional journey into the hearts of three women. Three women who loved life but were unsettled by the finality of each hour and the limited time we are given to truly enjoy it’s gifts. When I received the book as a gift over the holidays, I’d never heard of it or the movie based on the novel. As I saw trailers for the movie and read praise for the book, I expected it to be a good novel. I did not expect it to touch me in such a profound way. I’ve talked to a couple of people who have said they had a hard time getting into the novel. That it was hard to keep track of the characters. And in the beginning it is not apparent how they are connected at all. This is true, the story has some trouble keeping my attention, but when I got to the end I knew it was worth it. It spoke to my heart.

The writing was overly descriptive. I don’t usually enjoy writing that uses more words than necessary. I enjoy a story that is more meat than fluff. However, in The Hours, the descriptiveness worked for me. Many of the passages work like meditation on my soul.

The plot was complicated and twisted. In several chapters you get a fictional view of the life and times of Virginia Woolf. Cunningham crafts a narrative look at the woman’s discontent and illness. In several other chapters we watch Clarissa prepare a party for a dying friend. The story is a modern rendition of Mrs. Dalloway, the celebrated novel written by Woolf. Lastly, we get a glimpse into the life of Mrs. Brown; a housewife in the 50’s married to a war hero, and mother to a young boy. Her life seems to be dull and mismatched to her personality. It is clear how Clarissa and Virginia Woolf are connected but Mrs. Brown is an anomaly that doesn’t seem to make sense until almost the last pages. I don’t want to spoil the revelation, so I’ll leave the question unanswered, but I promise it does make sense in the end.

The final page of the novel is where Cunningham captured my favor. In the following passage Clarissa explains the reason why life, as hard as it is, is something the still strive for:

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, or most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep?it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour hear of there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (an perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Heaven only knows why we love it so.

Here, then, is the party, still laid; here are the flowers, still fresh; everything ready for the guests, who have turned out to be only four. Forgive us, Richard. It is, in fact, a party, after all. It is a party for the not-yet-dead; for the relatively undamaged; for those who for mysterious reasons have the fortune to be alive.”

– Michael Cunningham, The Hours, pg. 225-226

For me, despite the flowery language and the complicated plot, this final passage effects me and speaks to something inside of me. It is as if I wrote that passage myself. I can think of countless moments that I felt and acknowledged as fleeting. A moment under the lights?dancing , a final goodbye kiss and a moment at the top of a hill that seemed to short to be memorable but was, exceedingly. These moments I knew would be short, but made all the hardship that followed worth it for the chance to meet another moment...less

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Alisa rated it:

11/26/07

bookshelves: abandoned

Read in January, 2002

I wasn't sure whether to give this book one or two stars, but then I remembered how it completely turned me off to Mrs. Dalloway, and this fact coupled with my *love* for Ms. V. Woolf makes for a pretty amazing accomplishment.

I admit, I didn't finish this book (read about 150 pages). It seemed exactly like the movie, which I hated, but I read it anyway because I was so determined to like it, because people in my life with big hearts and minds *loved* it and were sooo moved by it and I was j...more I wasn't sure whether to give this book one or two stars, but then I remembered how it completely turned me off to Mrs. Dalloway, and this fact coupled with my *love* for Ms. V. Woolf makes for a pretty amazing accomplishment.

I admit, I didn't finish this book (read about 150 pages). It seemed exactly like the movie, which I hated, but I read it anyway because I was so determined to like it, because people in my life with big hearts and minds *loved* it and were sooo moved by it and I was just not there. And I wanted to be there. It wasn't like when my high school soccer team did the pre-game Macarena dance and I was too cool for school.

First off, I just remember having a bad reaction to how stylized and self-conscious it was. And you know what? When I watched the extras on the DVD (yes, I was that determined), it just didn't help things. Michael Cunningham takes himself way too seriously; it makes me want to throw that lone little star at him and have a good laugh.

Here are some other things I remember taking issue with (and excuse me for speaking in movie terms because that's what sticks):

1) What was with that Ed Harris character's dialogue before he throws himself out the window? It was so obvious that he was about to take his life, but on his way there, he was just spilling out poetic soap opera dialogue ... actually all the dialogue struck me this way. Anyway I don't think you'd exactly be all poetry before throwing yourself out the effing window.

2) The Julianne Moore character made me so angry. You're not supposed to agree with what she does, of course, but I do think you need to have some sympathy for her to sort of *get* the story. Maybe I'd feel differently now, but somehow she just pissed me off.

3) Why does M. Cunningham create a world where 95% of the people are gay? Because even the people that don't need to be gay for the story are gay, and why? And I really don't think it's because of any homophobia on my end, because I'm pretty sure I don't have any, but I think I take issue with this because I felt like Michael Cunningham wanted to fill what he felt was some sort of superworld of humanity with superethereal people like him, so he made them all gay and it was unrealistic. Michael Cunningham, or should I write, M-l C-m, said, "Let there be gay," and there was gay. You know what I mean?

The parts I actually liked, despite whatever weird issues I have with his stylizing, were the parts on V. Woolf b/c these were actually based on her life and Nicole Kidman was perfection in that big fake clay nose, wasn't she?...less

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Nell rated it:

07/13/08

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: Fans of Aunt Virginia; my father and uncle

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

First of all, this was far superior to the movie. Cunningham can get a little precious, and sometimes his sentences mirror "Mrs. Dalloway" too closely. What he did learn from Virginia Woolf, though, is how to make even the most ordinary situations resonate beyond their little dark corners. His style is not nearly as rich or as lyrical as hers (whose is?), but he gets the atmosphere right.

I can't decide whether to give this four stars or five. It would only earn the fifth s...more First of all, this was far superior to the movie. Cunningham can get a little precious, and sometimes his sentences mirror "Mrs. Dalloway" too closely. What he did learn from Virginia Woolf, though, is how to make even the most ordinary situations resonate beyond their little dark corners. His style is not nearly as rich or as lyrical as hers (whose is?), but he gets the atmosphere right.

I can't decide whether to give this four stars or five. It would only earn the fifth star because of echoes of family history. I knew this would happen, because I'd seen the movie. It was why I was scared to read the book.

Before I started reading this, I wrote, "If parts of Laura Brown's story seem to be taken straight out of my grandmother's diary (Did she keep a diary?), it no longer seems fair to hold that against Michael Cunningham." I don't hold that against him. Still, reading the last chapter, I wanted to rip out the pages and hurl the book at the wall. Is he too sympathetic, is he a relativist without a moral compass, or is he just a good writer?

Here's where I take umbrage. In my copy, it's on page 222:

Clarissa says, "I took the best care of him I could."
Laura nods. She says, "I wish I could have done better."
"I wish the same thing myself."
Laura says, "We did the best we could, dear. That's all anyone can do, isn't it?"

No. No you did not do the best you could. You could have not abandoned your family. You were the only one who thought you had failed. To think that your family, your neighbors, would say after your death, "We thought her sorrows were ordinary sorrows; we had no idea," is to have delusions of grandeur. You were not heroic. To abandon your children, intentionally, is beyond selfish. I'm not sure I know a word for it. I don't care whether you didn't have a choice about the life you could lead. I should care, but I don't. I've seen the aftermath, I've felt it (albeit second-hand), and I care about that. I care that I can't fix something caused by a woman much like Laura Brown.

So, I'm not mad at Michael Cunningham. I'm mad at these fictional characters who get hear what the suicidal mother has to say for herself. I'm mad at the suicidal mother for believing that what she has to say for herself is enough.

And to top it all off, when Laura runs away, after a failed suicide attempt, she ends up as a librarian in Toronto. My uncle, the oldest child of a (successfully) suicidal mother, ran away to Toronto...and married a librarian. I know, I'm grasping at straws. But still.

Michael Cunningham, when did you meet us? Did you draw us out of thin air? Are we possibly composites of your characters, if not the other way around?

...less

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Victory rated it:

02/27/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in February, 2008

Just getting into this book so I don't have a lot to say to begin with but the writing is sound and the story is interesting. I have already seen the movie, for better or worse, so I know my views will be colored by this. I did like the movie and I often like the book better than the movie so I'm looking forward to this one...

Update. Just finished it last night.

What beautiful writing, bringing together the book Mrs. Dallaway and the unique stories of the three women-- one woman, Clari...more Just getting into this book so I don't have a lot to say to begin with but the writing is sound and the story is interesting. I have already seen the movie, for better or worse, so I know my views will be colored by this. I did like the movie and I often like the book better than the movie so I'm looking forward to this one...

Update. Just finished it last night.

What beautiful writing, bringing together the book Mrs. Dallaway and the unique stories of the three women-- one woman, Clarissa, in relatively modern-day new york; Virgnia Woolf, right after a significant life change and during a stay in Richmond a suburb of London and during the period she is writing Mrs. Dalloway, and Laura, a war bride who is having doubts of her marriage and her capabilties as as mother to her unborn child and son.

The book switches views between the three women which sometimes ends up meaning a slog through one of the characters's parts that is les compelling but this time seemed fairly evenly balanced. There was one point when I realized I was slighly more reluctant to read about Laura then the others but for the most part each of the women's stories are engaging and definately made me want to continue to read.

I suppose it would be easier to understand this book and "get" more of the references if you had read Mrs. Dalloway, it certainly helped to color certain sections, however I don't beleive you have to have read it in order to get a great deal out of this book. It did give me the urge to re-read Mrs. Dallaway and might give people who haven't read Mrs. Dalloway the urge to pick it up-- and I think that's a marvelous thing indeed.

I am impressed that it's a man who's written it as I really felt this to be a woman's book with the struggles that many women have dealt or deal with. I expected to like the book more than the movie but having read the book I cannot say fairly the movie does the book justice. It pales in comparison.

The writing felt very close to my heart, something that as I writer I felt I could relate to-- so I would say I'm a little biased, but it's just a good read.

Normally I have a few things to pick over, I'm a fussy reader, but there is very little to fuss over from this book.

I stayed up to read finish it. I am sad that it's over with. I took time to re-read sections that I felt I didn't give enough time to-- this is an usual activity for me. I ususally blow through a book very quickly but I delberately forced myself to slow down so I could enjoy more of it.

I have the urge to read more about Virginia Woolf too. There is a "sources" for the biographies he used and I would like to take a look....less

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Robert rated it:

02/11/08

bookshelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

Read in December, 2000

Michael Cunningham, The Hours (FSG, 1998)

The Pulitzer? Cunningham was ignored for Flesh and Blood, and got the Pulitzer for this? There's only one explanation, and that's that the Pulitzer committe (which, it was recently pointed out, is made up of journalists) completely forgot the opening hundred seventy-five pages in the process of being stunned by the last fifty.

Publisher's Weekly, in its review of The Hours, castigates Cunningham in a minor way for the scope of Flesh and Blood, and comp...more Michael Cunningham, The Hours (FSG, 1998)

The Pulitzer? Cunningham was ignored for Flesh and Blood, and got the Pulitzer for this? There's only one explanation, and that's that the Pulitzer committe (which, it was recently pointed out, is made up of journalists) completely forgot the opening hundred seventy-five pages in the process of being stunned by the last fifty.

Publisher's Weekly, in its review of The Hours, castigates Cunningham in a minor way for the scope of Flesh and Blood, and compares The Hours favoriably to that novel because The Hours is a little less than half as long. I can't argue with PW's assertion that The Hours shows that Cunningham can write a shorter novel that has the same power as Flesh and Blood did, but I can, and do, take issue with the inference that Flesh and Blood is a lesser book because of it. Where Flesh and Blood stayed in one general time frame and focused on one excellently-drawn extended family, The Hours cuts back and forth, paralleling the lives of Virginia Woolf in England, a fan of Virginia Woolf's who's in the process of reading Mrs. Dalloway, and the fan's son, who grows up to be an award-winning poet suffering from complications resulting from AIDS.

When Cunningham focuses on his fictional creations, things are all well and good. The Hours contains many of the things that made Flesh and Blood a great novel-- Cunningham's powerful style of narrative, his willingness to go more deeply into the emotions of characters than most writers, an ability to pace his book that's unmatched in modern literature. Ironically, it's when Cunningham focuses on Virginia Woolf and her family that the characters stop being realistic. There's just not enough of them, and Cunningham's hero-worship of Woolf is too obvious. The end result is a novel inconsistent at best.

When it's on its game, though, The Hours is a rollercoaster of a novel. The last fifty pages, especially, will be read at one clip, as Cunningham ties in the stories of the mother and son, and the grandiose prose used in the last few sections of the novel is more than deserved. This is a novel capable of bringing tears in its last pages. If the rest of the book had been firing on that many cylinders, it would have been a Pulitzer no-brainer, but as it stands, in the bulky shadow of its superior predecessor, one wonders if the committee weren't trying to right the mistake it had made in ignoring

Flesh and Blood three years previous. ** 1/2 ...less

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Helen rated it:

02/21/08

bookshelves: 20th-century-fiction

Read in February, 2008

I can't think why it's taken me so long to read this book, but I'm glad I finally did, because I truly loved it. Cunningham writes about one day in the life of three women. On an English morning in 1923, Virginia Woolf begins to write the book that will become Mrs Dalloway (its working title was The Hours). In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan plans a party for her oldest friend and one-time lover, a dying poet who has just been awarded a major literary prize. And in 1949 suburban Los Angeles, pr...more I can't think why it's taken me so long to read this book, but I'm glad I finally did, because I truly loved it. Cunningham writes about one day in the life of three women. On an English morning in 1923, Virginia Woolf begins to write the book that will become Mrs Dalloway (its working title was The Hours). In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan plans a party for her oldest friend and one-time lover, a dying poet who has just been awarded a major literary prize. And in 1949 suburban Los Angeles, pregnant housewife Laura Brown prepares for her husband's birthday, but all she really wants to do is read Mrs Dalloway.

From this initial conceit, Cunningham produces an engrossing story. Like Mrs Dalloway, the story deals with a single day in the lives of these three women. An ordinary, unremarkable day, a day stuffed with hours that must somehow be got through. Each woman has her own concerns and problems, which might seem trivial to other people, but of such seemingly insignificant cares our lives are composed. And we carry on because each hour offers the promise of some moment of joy, of something remarkable happening.

This is a complex novel, and I really can't do justice to it in a short review.The three women have nothing - and everything - in common. Very little happens, but life (and death) happens. Life is composed not just of the few big dramas, it's the many hours filled with the mundane, the trivial, the small turning points. I think it is for this reason, amongst others, that I dislike people criticising 'domestic' fiction. Most of us will never fight in a war or change history, but we all have to get through the hours of the day, and those minutes and hours are just as important to us as the times of great drama and crisis, because they are our lives.

I think it probably helps to know a little background information about Virginia Woolf before reading this book, and a knowledge of Mrs Dalloway does, I think, increase the richness of the experience. My only major quibble with the book is the ending, in which a major plot point links the women in what seems to me a rather contrived and unsatisfying way. [February 2008]...less

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Toryssa rated it:

09/02/07

Read in June, 2006

"There is just this for consolation : an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more."

"She wants (she admits to herself) a dream of a cake manifested as an actual cake; ...more

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Jessica rated it:

09/29/07

bookshelves: crazy-ladies

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: party planners

I LOVED this book. I just loved it. I really thought it was fabulous. The absolute best parts, for me, were the Clarissa sections when she is stumbling around the West Village buying flowers and all that for her party. Like when she sees the movie trailer, that always really stuck with me.... It's one of those books that totally changed the way I think about older rich ladies who live in the West Village. It made me enjoy being in that neighborhood more, and I often think of it when I'm in the a...more

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Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0312243022)

07/04/07

bookshelves: released

It was a pleasant surprise. It had some flaws here and there and wasn't the best book I've ever read but it was oddly compelling and I stayed up a little late to finish it. One of the debates I've seen among other reviewers of the book (I haven't checked if this is true among film viewers too as I've not seen the film) is whether or not one needs to have read Mrs. Dalloway to "get" The Hours. The answer is no. I've not read Mrs. Dalloway (the only Woolf I've read is Orlando and that wa...more

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minervasowl rated it:

03/29/08

bookshelves: fiction

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I read this book because Oprah told me to.

Actually Oprah, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman told me to.

It must have been a Thursday or Friday afternoon because those were the days off the last time I had a job for which I worked weekends.

The episode with these three ladies was a little unconventional for Oprah. Rather than conducting an interview from her usual studio, she met them for tea in a fancy hotel. And it didn't so much seem ...more

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Sammy rated it:

06/12/07

bookshelves: the-okay

Read in December, 2006

Okay, let's be honest, the only reason this book isn't getting a D is because the language was very beautiful... most of the time. It was beautiful when it wasn't beating me over the head with the whole, "Look how eloquently I can write and use big words and sound smart! Don't you feel smart just reading it? Oh, wait... you just feel stupid, huh?" Which, honestly, wasn't that much, but it was enough to annoy me.

The problem I had with the whole story was that I could not find sympat...more

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Joel rated it:

03/19/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2008

This is a book that is difficult for me to review. It is rich in character development and is very well written. It kept my attention and I found that I could not put it down. But some things about it bothered me all the way through. Ultimately, I think they were: (i) I could not really relate to any of the characters; (ii) I found the whole outlook too pessimistic (I guess this is probably the same as (i)) and (iii) I couldn't get into the rhythm of the sentence structure. I really enjoyed...more

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Soomanaat rated it:

(review of isbn 1841150355)

11/01/07

اين كتاب و بيشتر فيلمش را بسيار دوست مي‌دارم. موسيقي متن زيباي فيليپ گلاس و بازي بسيار زيباي نيكول كيدمن كه بنده اسكار آن سال هم شد. تا قبل از اينكه اين فيلم را ببينم نيكول كيدمن را به عنوان بازيگر فبول نداشتم اما دو سكانس شاهكار اين فيلم يكي زماني كه كيدمن بر روي زمين مي‌خواب�...more

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Don rated it:

(review of isbn 0374172897)

10/20/07

Read in October, 2007

I spent one golden October day reading Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS. I must say it is one of my new favorite books. I felt like I was in EACH world, walking around, taking up space. The "Mrs. Dalloway" scenes made me miss walking down the streets of Lower Manhattan. But I couldn’t wait to get back to post World War I England and Mrs. Woolf. I longed for THAT world most!

My eating and breathing of that novel -- I suppose -- was spurred on by the film score by Philip Glass. I hav...more

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Donna rated it:

01/11/08

bookshelves: 1001-books, book-critics-circle, impac-dublin, pulitzer-prize

Read in March, 2006

BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT! BRILLIANT! I loved loved LOVED this book! Every word, every page…. Fantastic writing, intricate structure, amazing insights. I have LOADS of passages earmarked. This is definitely a must-read-again (and again and again and again!). I *never* cry when I read books – this time I cried.

FAVOURITE QUOTE: “It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that t...more

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Shana rated it:

12/26/07

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: no one who loves Mrs. Dalloway

To be fair, I should state that I never finished this book. I couldn't. It was too awful. Usually, that isn't my style. Usually, I finish what I start. I guess I have some vague hope that maybe some way, some how whatever it is will improve, so I try to power through. Usually. There are a few things I've quit. Moulin Rouge, for example. It was painful. And this.

I love, love, love Mrs. Dalloway. It was no easy task, of course. Mrs. Dalloway is not the kind of book e...more