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The Hours

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 62,896 ratings · 2,508 reviews

A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and i...more

Hardcover, 230 pages

Published November 11th 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Feb 19, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Book Circle Reads 20

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: Three women mirror the facets of the life of Clarissa Dalloway, heroine of the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. One life is Mrs. Woolf herself, shown in the depths of despair as she convalesces from one of her crippling bouts with depression in the suburban aridity of Richmond while pining for life in London's Bloomsbury, writing her novel of the exquisite nature of the quotidian. Another is the life of Mrs. Laura Brown, dying a mil...more Book Circle Reads 20

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Book Report: Three women mirror the facets of the life of Clarissa Dalloway, heroine of the novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. One life is Mrs. Woolf herself, shown in the depths of despair as she convalesces from one of her crippling bouts with depression in the suburban aridity of Richmond while pining for life in London's Bloomsbury, writing her novel of the exquisite nature of the quotidian. Another is the life of Mrs. Laura Brown, dying a million deaths every day in suburban Los Angeles, raising a son and pregnant again by a good man she doesn't love, as she reads Mrs. Dalloway and ponders escape. Lastly the life of Clarissa Vaughn, whose long unrequited love for Richard Brown, her gay poet/novelist friend, has led her to care for him tenderly in his final years as an AIDS patient. He long ago nicknamed her “Mrs. Dalloway,” both for her first name and for her exquisitely self-abnegating strength.

Over the course of one day in the life of each woman, everything she knows and feels about her life is sharply refocused; it is made clear to each that, to escape the trap she is in, she must accept change or die in the trap. The ending of the book brings all three strands to their inevitable conclusions, with surprising overlaps.

My Review: I first read this when it came out in 1998. I fell in love instantly, as I had with Mrs. Dalloway at a slightly earlier date. I loved the imaginative structure of interwoven lives, commenting on each other and riffing off the events in each world, echoing some facet in every case the events in the iconic novel Mrs. Dalloway.

I can't give it five stars because, in the end, I wondered a bit if the clever-clever hadn't gotten in the way of the emotional core of the book, which I saw as the gritty determination of the women to live on their own terms and in their own lives not dependent on convention. In making the book conform to this ideal, I felt that some plot strands weren't honestly dealt with but rather forced into a shape required by the author's plans.

That cavil aside, the book is beautifully written and wonderfully interestingly conceived. I'd recommend it heartily, and suggest reading it in conjunction with the movie.(less)

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Oct 29, 2011 Giovanni Faga rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Apro a caso:

"Qui, in questa cucina, piatti bianchi sono impilati come se fossero nuovi, come arredi sacri, dietro le porte a vetri delle credenze. Una fila di vecchie pentole in terracotta, verniciate in varie tonalità di giallo cavillato, è disposta sul ripiano di granito. Clarissa riconosce queste cose, ma rimane separata da esse. Sente la presenza del suo stesso fantasma: la parte di lei più indistruttibilmente viva e meno distinta; la parte che non possiede nulla, che osserva con meraviglia...more

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Jun 12, 2007 Sammy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: c-the-okay

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 sympathy in any of t...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Sarah rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first read this book, I loved it. But as I spent time thinking about it, I found myself liking the novel less and less. Finally I went back and re-read it, and on the second reading I truly disliked it. Partly, things that had seemed profound or beautiful looked much more flimsy on second glance...even trite, sometimes. Like a facade of depth, if that makes any sense. Which is not to say that Cunningham isn't completely sincere and genuine in his approach to his subject. Just that I'm not...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Angus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pulitzer-prize, reviewed-and-blogged, 5-stars

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

My original copy of this book was bought by my cousin at a book store in Tokyo. I immediately read it as soon as I got it. But a few years later, termites destroyed it. Maybe those pests are into Japanese cuisine?

Anyway, ever since this book started to appear in secondhand book stores, I developed this urge to buy each copy. I bought a number and gave them all to my friends. And they wouldn’t disappear from those book stores. I had the sense to control my u...more

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Feb 10, 2009 Peter added it · review of another edition

Shelves: tutoring

When you read a book like The Hours, you have to decide whether you want to see it as a work in its own right or as an illumination of something else. In this case, The Hours can either be seen as a standalone novel telling the parallel stories of three women in three time periods or as a complementary text to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

I struggled with The Hours. (Full disclosure: I struggled with it mostly because I heard Michael Cunningham speak at a screening, and he was an arrogant, po...more

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Aug 02, 2011 Tancredi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scorrete-lacrime, preferiti, statunitensi

"Non credo che due persone avrebbero potuto essere più felici di quanto siamo stati noi"

Scrivere una recensione, o anche uno straccio soltanto di commento su questo piccolo capolavoro è impresa quanto mai ardua ed impossibile. Potrei provarci e riprovarci: rimmarebbe sempre la sensazione di non aver reso per nulla la grandezza e la perfezione di questo gioiello della letteratura contemporanea. Allora potrei anche dire solo questo. Vi basti questo: qualunque recensione non può nemmeno lontanament...more

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Jun 07, 2009 Madalena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, american

I really enjoyed this book. I enjoyed that it was beautifully written, even if sometimes 'too' beautiful - the kind of writing that makes you stop reading and think about it. Anyway, I'm always pleased at words that sound good togther, that look nice together, and I think the author's consistently good at it.

Plot wise, I had seen the film before I read it, and although I didnt really remember much details, I think that helped me not getting confused about the characters, names, relationships, et...more

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Mar 29, 2008 minervasowl rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 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 like an interv...more

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Jan 11, 2008 Donna rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

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 the entire experien...more

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Jun 16, 2007 stephanie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporaryfiction, prize-winners, historical-fiction

i kind of wonder what would have happened if this hadn't been my first cunningham. i didn't like any of his other books anywhere near as much (i full on hated Specimen Days). but this, somehow, i think it has to do with the way he manages to write virginia in a way that seems pretty true, that won me over. also, the modern-day "mrs. dalloway" breaks my heart every time i read the damn thing.

i think i liked it so much because it was so ambitious, and i thought he pulled it off. i mean, to write...more

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Feb 23, 2009 Heather rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not usually crazy about book characters to whom I can't relate, but MY GOD! the prose is magnificent. Sometimes I felt like Cunningham was just showing off, but I would too if I could write like this:

"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 the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been l...more

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Feb 24, 2008 Debbie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: nobody

Recommended to Debbie by: book club

I wish I could've rated this 0 stars. It is the hope-less story about three women living in different eras who are unhappy with their lives. Even though they each have significant resources (money, friendship, family, intelligence), they focus on the deficits and let those envelope their lives. Suicide is advocated as some kind of empowering choice. It is a look inside of depressed lives without the slightest possibility that such lives can find joy and hope again.

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Apr 20, 2013 Pilar L. S. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Me gustan especialmente estas historias que aparentan contar poca cosa, apenas unas horas en la vida de tres mujeres: Clarissa, una ama de casa en el Nueva York de los 90, de Virginia Woolf en el Londres de 1923 y de Laura Brown, otra ama de casa de Los Ángeles en 1949. El nexo que las va uniendo a las tres es lo que te atrapa, esos saltos entre algún momento de sus vidas que te ubican en el tiempo pero que a la vez van tejiendo poco a poco los lazos que las unen al presente. Y todo lo que hay d...more Me gustan especialmente estas historias que aparentan contar poca cosa, apenas unas horas en la vida de tres mujeres: Clarissa, una ama de casa en el Nueva York de los 90, de Virginia Woolf en el Londres de 1923 y de Laura Brown, otra ama de casa de Los Ángeles en 1949. El nexo que las va uniendo a las tres es lo que te atrapa, esos saltos entre algún momento de sus vidas que te ubican en el tiempo pero que a la vez van tejiendo poco a poco los lazos que las unen al presente. Y todo lo que hay detrás, cuando acabas el libro, es tan denso que te preguntas cómo Michael Cunningham ha podido condensar todo eso en apenas 200 páginas.

Empezando por la enfermedad mental, el desequilibrio psíquico, esos misterios de la mente que les abocará al suicidio: a Virginia Woolf, la autora que cree estar escribiendo su obra cumbre; a Séptimus (el personaje de la novela que está escribiendo, La señora Dalloway) y a Richard, amigo de Clarissa e hijo de Laura, ambas protagonistas y musas de su obra. Y la relación entre locura y arte, otra vez a través del triángulo Virginia-Septimus-Richard y esos guiños constantes a la novela de Woolf, ya no sólo en el contenido mismo sino en la propia forma.

Siguiendo por esa necesidad de huir, en algún momento, de los personajes, cuando Laura huye a un hotel para poder seguir leyendo tranquilamente la novela de Virginia Woolf mientras más adelante la propia Virginia trata infructuosamente de huir a Londres, por unas horas, para pasear. Sólo unas horas. Porque a eso se reduce, inevitablemente, la felicidad, a escasas horas, esos breves momentos en los que somos conscientes de estar abrazando la felicidad, durante un beso, un paseo en un día de sol o durante la lectura de un buen libro.

Toca otros temas, no menos baladíes, como la homosexualidad, el SIDA, el amor en sus múltiples formas... pero para mí la esencia de "Las horas" se resume magistralmente en esta frase: "El único consuelo que tenemos es esta hora o aquella en que nuestra vida, contra toda probabilidad y contra toda expectativa, se abre de pronto y nos da todo lo que hemos imaginado, aunque todos, menos los niños (y quizás ellos también), sabemos que a esas horas, inevitablemente, les seguirán otras, mucho más oscuras y más arduas".

Gracias, Libertad Morán, por descubrírmela.(less)

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Jun 06, 2012 Jolanta rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: usa, favorites

´The Hours´ is about three different women, living in three different periods of the 20th century, telling the story of one day in each of their lives. Three different, contradictory and yet so similar stories.

In 1923, Virginia Woolf begins her work on ´Mrs Dalloway´, living with her husband on the outskirts of London. Smothered, trapped in herself, increasingly feeling that she embraces depression and mental illness, struggling with uncertainty and accumulation of ideas.

Gradually reality and...more ´The Hours´ is about three different women, living in three different periods of the 20th century, telling the story of one day in each of their lives. Three different, contradictory and yet so similar stories.

In 1923, Virginia Woolf begins her work on ´Mrs Dalloway´, living with her husband on the outskirts of London. Smothered, trapped in herself, increasingly feeling that she embraces depression and mental illness, struggling with uncertainty and accumulation of ideas.

Gradually reality and fiction become difficult to distinguish.

Clarissa Vaughan, a resident of New York of today, is for eighteen years now living in a relationship with another woman. She is going to host a party in honor of a friend, a former lover, and gay poet, who is dying of AIDS and has just been awarded a big literary prize. Richard calls her ´Mrs Dalloway´ after the heroine of Virgina Woolf´s famous novel with whom she shares the same name.

In 1949 Laura Brown, a young wife and mother, pregnant, is baking a birthday cake with the assistance of her 3-year-old son for her husband. She is trapped in a schematic marriage, unhappy, reluctant to perform simple, every day activities and would rather stay in bed reading Woolfs´ ´Mrs Dalloway´. An impulsive kiss to a female neighbour changes her life and she is about to discover what resides within her.

Michael Cunningham links his own book to the novel ´Mrs Dalloway´ and homosexuality. Very skillfully he introduces the biography of Virginia Woolf and her suicide at the age of 59, filling the pockets of her clothes to drown herself.

Not without significance is the fact that Cunningham is gay himself, hence such broad references to homosexuality. He well combines three stories and skillfully weaves the different lives of these women into each other.

The original title of ´Mrs Dalloway´ was ´The Hours´ but Cunninghams´ novel is not a rip-off. He emulates Woolfs´ way of writing which is fortunately never pretense but a neat and interesting treatment, playing with form and style full of emotions and detail. It echos ´Mrs Dalloway´ , rephrases it, brings it into a new light. An addition, a homage, a subtle, moving but powerful, daring and sensible nod which establish soon a life of its own.

The characters are drawn with a great deal of psychology, but also with the poetry of a reality depicted in gray. It´s a novel about women, about the fact that each of us carry a stone in a pocket, which sometimes, whether one bakes a cake or organizes a party, manifests itself. Does one have enough strength to carry it or does it leads inevitably to the river?

An emergency call upon us to reflect on ones´ current life and decisions. A captivating story of a painful solitude, breaking routines, finding happiness and inner strength that is greater than one thinks.

I want to hug and kiss Michael Cunningham for having written this novel.(less)

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Jan 29, 2009 Randy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A gripping story about 3 woman in different time periods each unhappy with their lives. This is easily my all time favorite book for the beauty, the prose, the connections and the storylines. Simply wonderful. A novel to aspire towards.

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Aug 29, 2011 Karima rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Give this book your undivided attention. It deserves every second.

"The Hours" weaves together the lives of three different women living in three different times and places. The first story is that of Virginia Woolf during a day in 1923, when she is writing "Mrs. Dalloway". The second is the story of Laura Brown, a deeply unhappy, bookish married woman living in the suburbs of Los Angeles. It is 1949 and a pregnant Laura, along with her four-year-old-son is baking a cake for her husband's birthda...more

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May 19, 2012 Arwen56 rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: romanzi, favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Sembra che in questo momento Richard cominci davvero a lasciare il mondo. Per Clarissa è una sensazione quasi fisica, uno strappo morbido ma irreversibile, come un filo d'erba che venga tirato via dalla terra. Fra poco Clarissa si addormenterà, fra poco tutti quelli che lo conoscevano saranno addormentati, e tutti si sveglieranno domani mattina per scoprire che lui si è unito al regno dei morti. Si chiede se l'indomani mattina segnerà non solo la fine dell'esistenza terrena di Richard, ma anche...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Mowey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

gaad, i loved it. i just loved the book to pieces.

i’m still confounded of why in that moment i first laid my eyes on this book, did i feel automatically drawn to pick it up and buy it. i have to tell you, it’s even got nothing to do with the beautiful faces of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman on the glossy cover. for i was even remotely aware of the celluloid version of the novel at the time when i bought it. and then i read the back cover and i thought, maybe, just maybe, it was...more gaad, i loved it. i just loved the book to pieces.

i’m still confounded of why in that moment i first laid my eyes on this book, did i feel automatically drawn to pick it up and buy it. i have to tell you, it’s even got nothing to do with the beautiful faces of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman on the glossy cover. for i was even remotely aware of the celluloid version of the novel at the time when i bought it. and then i read the back cover and i thought, maybe, just maybe, it was Michael Cunningham, being the male author that he is. i’am a fan of male authors disposing stories about familial lives, of women and their particulars and their sad goings-on of stories about realities sans their banal romance and pretenses. in my opinion, male authors have extraordinary abilities in rendering their truths.

so, i went home with the book and wondering if my being a movie lover would serve me right to support my inkling with the book, i watched the movie trailer.

and, after seeing it, i told my self, i couldn’t love the book more. i have to read it. it was a delight right before i started. and when i was actually reading it, how i dreaded for it to not end.

the interwoven lives of the three extraordinary women take on the slim plot of the book (it has only 226 pages): Clarissa Vaughan, Virginia Woolf, and Laura Brown of circa 1999, 1923, and 1949 respectively. the pivotal theme being Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novel Mrs. Dalloway, the thing that bound them all.

with the cunning way Cunningham tried to depict these women’s lives through his ardent language, the trivial and monumental natures of these women were revealed. and a deep sense of affinity with them develops in an instant. the telling of geographic atmospheres were very natural, stygian, and very very genuine. you would feel the landscapes, whether it was that uneventful morning of late June in New York city, a forbidding past 7AM in a suburb of London, or a confining day of one particular household in L.A. and the intricate tendrils of desperation behind these landscapes rooting from the seemingly placid and unimportant lives of the protagonists were just poignant and moving.

two or three chapters off the book, and i will tell you, it would make you think of the life you’ve lived, or are living. you would find that the parallel lives with these three women with yours, either you’re a child, a woman, a father, a neighbor, a partner, or a friend at the time of the reading, are made immensely commonplace and passionately similar. and what is notable here is the brassy exploration of life, of the buried realities of it that lie underneath, that, with each page and passage being read, are unearthed, and it would feel like a slap of cold water in your face because Clarissa, Virginia, Laura, and the men and fathers, the daughters and sons, the partners and lovers behind them are part and parcel what truly a human being is all about. very honest in all the most brutal ways, rueful, and refreshing all at the same time. these characters are you. their stories yours within the turning of the pages. it’s like your own setbacks, catastrophes and joys are being shown before your eyes in bright flashes and huge increments. as i’ve said, there’s this profound connection that strikes you and you’d tell yourself (remembering everything you read) that wow, that’s exactly the live that i’ve led, or if not, that’s as close as it could get. every piece of crucial nostalgia and longing is brought to the surface. you absorb something from everyone in this book and you take the dark moments and small joys with you because they are your own in the first place. the ending of the book is just another thing in its levity.

if you’re a literature buff, you know there are novels too few out there that are life changing, right? The Hours has got mine altered a great deal. it’s a life changing work of genius that is beautiful too large for language.(less)

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Jul 04, 2012 Saman added it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

چند نفر از پنجره بیرون می‌پرند، یا خود را غرق می‌کنند، یا قرص می‌خورند؛ عده‌‌ی بیشتری بر اثر تصادف می‌میرند؛ و اکثریت ما را رفته رفته یکی از ده‌ها بیماری، یا اگر بخت یاری کند، خود زمان می‌بلعد. فقط این تسلای خاطر ناچیز هست: (ساعتی) این‌جا و آن‌جا که زندگی ما ظاهراً، به رغم همه‌ی غرابت‌ها و آرزوها، به رویمان آغوش می‌گشاید و هر آن‌چه را که تصور کرده‌ایم به ما می‌دهد، هر چند همه، جز کودکان ـ و شاید آن‌ها نیز ـ می‌دانند که به ناگزیر (ساعات) دیگری در پی این (ساعات) است، (ساعاتی) تاریک‌تر و پیچیده‌تر....more

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Feb 22, 2009 Carrie added it

Be warned: he drops the F-bomb 3 times. Also, I went into it knowing that every character was gay or had serious mental health issues, or both. It helped me to know that beforehand. Also, I understood that the entire book was based on Virginia Woolfe's "Mrs. Dalloway" and I was okay with that. (I thought that the point was to figure out which more modern-day character was Virginia Woolfe, metaphorically.)

Things I liked about the book: I loved the Prologue. I thought it was beautiful, which is mo...more Be warned: he drops the F-bomb 3 times. Also, I went into it knowing that every character was gay or had serious mental health issues, or both. It helped me to know that beforehand. Also, I understood that the entire book was based on Virginia Woolfe's "Mrs. Dalloway" and I was okay with that. (I thought that the point was to figure out which more modern-day character was Virginia Woolfe, metaphorically.)

Things I liked about the book: I loved the Prologue. I thought it was beautiful, which is morbid because it's about a suicide. I thought it was brilliant that there are no chapters dedicated to the central figure, even hero, of the book. I was moved by the resolution concerning the hero and the understanding of who the hero was.

Things I disliked about the book: I felt slightly invested in the character of Virginia Woolfe, but I did not feel invested in the characters of Clarissa or Laura. (That's 2/3 of the book.) I did feel invested in the characters of Laura's husband and son, but feel manipulated by the author for it (see below.)

I think the Themes of the book are: motherhood---or rather, screwing it up, time and the idea of Now, regrets and/or roads not taken, artists are the most important contributors and geniuses in society, loves, love, and loving--again, see below. And I think there's some gay propaganda/envelope pushing in ordering to make the envelope more inclusive.

And finally, I think the author wrote with a great deal of animosity toward each of the women in the story, even Virginia Woolf. (I didn't realize it cognitively until Melissa pointed it out.) Based on an interview (thanks, Margaret!), it seems this book was an ode to his mother and maybe to all women, although NOT a complimentary one. On the theme of loves, love, and loving: it seemed only the men in the book were good at it or even felt it truly. The women seemed to be much too caught up in themselves to ever really love anyone else, even if they acted as caretakers.

My friend Susan described this book as "joyless." Absolutely. I'm not sure how to rate it with the star system, so I won't. I didn't enjoy it. But I'm glad I read it. However, I wouldn't have wanted to read it without a bookgroup to bounce off of--to bounce ideas around, but also just to bounce out of the funk it left me in.
(less)

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Feb 19, 2009 Margaret rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Well at first I made it to "sluttish widow" and then I threw the book down. I picked it up again and made it the part about a woman agreeing to be harmless so her husband will provide for her and then I just decided to skip Clarissa's entire first chapter and move on to the next chapter on Woolf. Thus far I am wondering why this book won the Pulitzer Prize . . . So I have been reading the Woolf and Brown chapters and skimming the Clarissa chapters (I absolutely loathe these; the author is so cra...more

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Jul 27, 2008 Martine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who love an intense look at life

Shelves: film, glbt, modern-fiction, north-american, psychological-drama

Several years ago I had the fortune of watching the film adaptation of The Hours, which quite blew me away. I'm not sure why it then took me so long to read the book on which the film was based, but I'm glad I did, as it's just beautiful.

The Hours is both a tribute to and an update of Virginia Woolf's 1920s classic Mrs Dalloway, in which Pulitzer-winning author Michael Cunningham tries to answer the question of how Woolf's characters would interact in a present-day setting. Short on action but...more Several years ago I had the fortune of watching the film adaptation of The Hours, which quite blew me away. I'm not sure why it then took me so long to read the book on which the film was based, but I'm glad I did, as it's just beautiful.

The Hours is both a tribute to and an update of Virginia Woolf's 1920s classic Mrs Dalloway, in which Pulitzer-winning author Michael Cunningham tries to answer the question of how Woolf's characters would interact in a present-day setting. Short on action but long on memories, associations and momentous decisions, it's a character study of three women who are looking for some meaning in their lives. First of all, there's Woolf herself, recovering from a bout of mental illness and busy outlining the novel that will eventually become Mrs Dalloway. Secondly, there's Laura Brown, a 1940s American housewife who wishes to lose herself in the experience of reading Mrs Dalloway. And thirdly, there's Clarissa Vaughan, a modern fifty-something New Yorker who is nicknamed Mrs Dalloway and who experiences a day not unlike the one Woolf describes in Mrs Dalloway. Although the three women seem very different on the outset, they do in fact have a fair bit in common. For one thing, they're all perfectionists who obsess about little details and continually fall short of their own standards and expectations. For another, they all, for various reasons, feel trapped and want OUT. And finally, they're all prone to obsessing about the past -- to wondering why they made the decisions they made, and whether their lives would have been very different if they had made different choices at the time. Cunningham first lets his women dwell on those questions for a while, then has them either accept their current lives or find a way out. Their internal drama and eventual decisions make for a brilliant meditation on past and present, on choices and on resignation to those choices. Among other things, the book tells you what it's like to realise that you may have had your moment and let it slip through your fingers, never to regain it. It shows you what it's like to be a dreadful perfectionist, doomed always to let yourself down. It shows you love, life, death. Especially the latter. More than any other other novel I've read, The Hours is steeped in death. That probably sounds depressing, but it's really quite beautiful, if you're morbid enough to see the beauty in that sort of thing. Especially since it is in its own way quite life-affirming.

I could say a lot about the fabulous way in which Cunningham links his three stories -- about the many recurring themes, associations and echoes which make this such a hauntingly beautiful book. I could also say a lot about the respectful (and in my opinion successful) way in which he elaborates on the themes and questions raised in Mrs Dalloway (a book you needn't have read in order to appreciate The Hours, although it will definitely improve your understanding and enjoyment of the latter if you have). However, the main achievement of the book, as far as I'm concerned, is the marvellous way in which Cunningham paints emotions, more specifically emotions associated with depression, angst, melancholy and regret. I think you need to have been depressed or bipolar yourself really to understand the violent mood swings through which Cunningham puts his protagonists -- rapid transitions from despair to epiphany, from frustration to gratitude and exultation, from spiritual numbness to lyrical rapture, from ferocious neuroticism to a calm resignation to things. Having been there myself, I could relate only too well. I'm sure the same is true for many people -- men as well as women.

I'm taking one star off because Cunningham's shifts in perspective can be a tad jarring and because the dialogue is occasionally monotonous (all Cunningham's characters sound like the author himself, which is not a big deal as he's very articulate, but is still a bit of a flaw). Apart from that, though, The Hours is a great book which I highly recommend to anyone -- not just to neurotic women. :-)(less)

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Mar 19, 2008 Joel Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

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 the...more

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Dec 26, 2007 Shana rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 easily read on a train or a bus...more

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Nov 22, 2007 Adora rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

به نقل از سایت کتاب انتشارات کاروان
ساعت ها، هم بزرگداشت ویریجینیا وولف است و هم مخلوق خود. در این کتاب، مایکل کانینگهام به قهرمان ادبی خود زندگی می بخشد، و در کنار آن، سرگذشت ویرجینیا وولف را به زندگی دو زن معاصر پیوند می زند. وولف یک روز صبح از خواب بیدار می شود، او خوابی دیده که به زودی به رمان خانم دالووی تبدیل خواهد شد. در زمان حال، کلاریسا ووگان سعی دارد مهمانی ای برای عشق قدیمی اش، شاعری دچار ایدز بگیرد. و در لوس آنجلس در سال 1949، لورا براون، زنی حامله ، تمام تلاشش را می کند تا جشن تولد...more

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Jan 22, 2008 Renee rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: romantics book nerds

I just finished this a little bit ago. I try to resist reading pop literature, but I liked this movie a lot and it DID win the Pulitzer. The book is almost exactly like the movie--I can't think of a single left out scene or any point that was made clearer in the reading of the book. Cunningham's use of language is pretty good though honestly I find the meat of the story to be a little bit thin, or maybe just not that explicitly executed. He seems to be making a point about how hard it is to just...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Lys rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biblioteca, narrativa, paper-book

Ci sono libri più difficili da leggere che non altri. Difficili perché vanno a toccare corde vicine al nostro pensiero, alla nostra personalità, alla nostra sensibilità; difficili perché ogni parola, ogni azione e ogni pensiero è a suo modo un riflesso dei nostri. Non un riflesso preciso, nemmeno veritiero, ma che cattura quell'intima particolarità (mania, insicurezza, paranoia) e la porta sotto la luce (distorta, forse, ma noi ne scorgiamo ancora i contorni, nostri).
Per me, Le Ore è stato un li...more

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Feb 26, 2007 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

lush. voluptuous prose. can't help caring for these characters. learned the word "prolix." favorite paragraph:

"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 the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, w...more

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Dec 05, 2009 Ivan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

If you are a fan of long rambling novels full of characters and scenes superfluous to the plot, then this is probably not the novel for you. Multilayered and spanning the better part of the last century, "The Hours" is a beautifully articulated exercise in imagination and literary economy. Author Michael Cunningham has fashioned a triptych of stories dealing with three women - a writer, a reader and a character - in a stunning hommage to his favorite writer, Virginia Woolf, and his favorite nove...more

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About Michael Cunningham

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days. His most recent novel is By Nightfall. He lives in New York.

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“Beauty is a whore, I like money better.” — 237 people liked it

“Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.” — 152 people liked it

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