The Hours: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "There are still the flowers to buy..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Laura Brown, Walter Hardy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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:

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.

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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

At first blush, the structural and thematic conceits of this novel--three interwoven novellas in varying degrees connected to Virginia Woolf--seem like the stuff of a graduate student's pipe dream: a great idea in the dorm room that betrays a lack of originality. But as soon as one dips into Cunningham's prologue, in which Woolf's suicide is rendered with a precise yet harrowing matter-of-factness ("She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa."), the reader becomes completely entranced. This book more than fulfills the promise of Cunningham's 1990 debut, A Home at the End of the World, while showing that sweep does not necessarily require the sprawl of his second book, Flesh and Blood. In alternating chapters, the three stories unfold: "Mrs. Woolf," about Virginia's own struggle to find an opening for Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; "Mrs. Brown," about one Laura Brown's efforts to escape, somehow, an airless marriage in California in 1949 while, coincidentally, reading Mrs. Dalloway; and "Mrs. Dalloway," which is set in 1990s Greenwich Village and concerns Clarissa Vaughan's preparations for a party for her gay--and dying--friend, Richard, who has nicknamed her Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham's insightful use of the historical record concerning Woolf in her household outside London in the 1920s is matched by his audacious imagining of her inner lifeand his equally impressive plunges into the lives of Laura and Clarissa. The book would have been altogether absorbing had it been linked only thematically. However, Cunningham cleverly manages to pull the stories even more intimately togther in the closing pages. Along the way, rich and beautifully nuanced scenes follow one upon the other: Virginia, tired and weak, irked by the early arrival of headstrong sister Vanessa, her three children and the dead bird they bury in the backyard; Laura's afternoon escape to an L.A. hotel to read for a few hours; Clarissa's anguished witnessing of her friend's suicidal jump down an airshaft, rendered with unforgettable detail. The overall effect of this book is twofold. First, it makes a reader hunger to know all about Woolf, again; readers may be spooked at times, as Woolf's spirit emerges in unexpected ways, but hers is an abiding presence, more about living than dying. Second, and this is the gargantuan accomplishment of this small book, it makes a reader believe in the possibility and depth of a communality based on great literature, literature that has shown people how to live and what to ask of life. (Nov.) FYI: The Hours was a working title that Woolf for a time gave to Mrs. Dalloway.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312243022
• ISBN-13: 978-0312243029
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (545 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #73,310 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life-Changing Homage for a Woolf Worshipper, January 3, 2000

By	"threeguineas" (Laramie, WY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hours: A Novel (Hardcover)

Journal Entry, 2:30 AM, Jan. 3: What a lark! What a plunge! What a wonderful, delightful week, end to a year, a holiday, a millennium! And capped off with such a divine book, a sparkling diamond--The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. This (dare I say perfect?) book takes on all of the complexity of human interaction to come to the essence of Virginia Woolf's writing (I can't say it better than Cunningham or Woolf do, but for the purposes of posterity, let me record it): we die--by accident, suicide, disease, or the passage of time, and on the way there we are faced with seemingly insurmountable sorrow, regret, and the imprisonment of everyday life. Yet most of us choose to live through the next hour, even if it is agonizing, with the vague certainty that at any moment we could encounter a feeling of ephemeral, ineffable joy. We also have the liberating power to choose, to decide, to make an educated guess as to whether there will be any more hours of joy, and if not, to end our own lives. This book, as far as I have read, is the best attempt to analyze Woolf and her writing concisely and comprehensively, in the context of her life--it is at once great literary criticism and a work of incandescent art.

Cunningham stands on the shoulders of the person who I believe is the greatest literary giant of all time. Miraculously, and, perhaps more clearly and concisely than the giant herself and her umpteen biographers, successfully sorts out the difficult layers and issues in her writing (at various times, one feels sure her main purpose is to write about the creative process, at others, the nature of gender and sex, patriarchy, biography, politics, economics, celebrity, or philosophy), making them newly relevent in the present age.

Cunningham's Mrs. Brown asks herself, how...could someone who was able to write...like that...come to kill herself? He addresses the theme of despair in Woolf's books and life, which is often over-emphasized by critics. Cunningham reminds us that although Woolf took her own life, the ultimate purpose of her art was a celebration of life, love, and happiness in the midst of a heavy, chaotic, and massive world. Cunningham, as if working and communicating with Woolf directly, helps us to see as we enter the new century that headache, sorrow, regret, and their very stark contrast to joy, are essential to human life--that without the depths of despair, we have no joy, we have nothing. And with all joy and happiness and no sorrow, we become numb to the simple good fortune of being alive.

What more appropriate homage could be paid to Virginia Woolf, who changed the world in subtle and profound ways? I am so grateful to Cunningham for reviving Woolf so vividly, almost as though he earned the Pulitzer Prize for her. If only she could see that a man has done it! I believe that his purpose in writing this book was to share Woolf with the world again, to remind us that her insight into the human soul, and life's mysteries, are life-changing, and that by distilling her essential wisdom clearly and reverently, he created a small, beautiful, accessible package. I and others who are so moved can pass this on to as many people as possible, as an open door to the often overwhelming and dense but transcendent Virginia Woolf. I am thrilled. No book has ever moved me to get up at 2:30 a.m. to write a review. This book makes me want to celebrate Woolf's ability to articulate emotions that I and possibly millions of ordinary people feel in a given day; the emergence of a new author whose every new book I can now await with anticipation; the knowledge that I am not the only person in the world to call Woolf the most influential thinker in my life; and finally, the simple joy in my day-to-day existence. The most wonderful aspect of the book is that it stands on the shoulder of a giant so successfully, tearing down my initial skepticism within minutes, reverberating finally with liberating revelation for the ordinary and extraordinary people of our day.

I will give this book on every gift-giving occasion this year!

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Takes Your Breath Away, January 9, 2003

By	G. Millican (los angeles, ca USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Hours (Paperback)

You'll either love this novel so much you'll read passages over and over, or you'll give up after a couple of chapters. I think the reason so many people have problems with "The Hours" is that they don't enjoy reading a novel with such a dark mood. Some people aren't entertained by reading about such tragic loneliness. Cunningham deals with characters who who are depressed to the point of despair even when they are surrounded by people who love them unconditionally. It's probably hard for most people who are reasonably happy to grasp that kind of pain. The author's beautiful and sometimes poetic writing is an amazing work of art; the novel deserved all the praise it received. The way the story parallels Virginia Woolf's masterpiece "Mrs. Dalloway" is inspired. The book truly takes the reader into the world in which Virginia Woolf lived her brilliant and tortured life, and the transitions from Woolf's era to those of Laura Brown and Clarissa Vaughn were beautifully done. The best way to read this book is on a rainy day, classical music in the background and a pot of tea on the stove. If only other novels could compare...

77 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars true to the spirit of Woolf, July 1, 2000

By	M. H. Bayliss "book queen" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I must say I'm a bit surprised by the vicious attacks launched at Cunningham, especially by readers who admit they have not read anything by Woolf -- there is the first mistake. Though I haven't read Mrs. Dalloway in quite a while, I have read To the Lighthouse (one of my all time favorite novels) and Cunningham captures her genius perfectly! This book demands a certain amount of concentration on the reader's behalf, but it's worth it. If you have ever read anything by Woolf, you will immediately appreciate the nuance of his language. It's not pompous just because he gets the prosody and rhythm of Woolf right on the nose! Normally I don't like split narratives that jump from chapter to chapter, but Cunningham does it so seamlessly and with such a feel for the 3 main characters that I found myself drawn into all three story lines. I don't want to reveal how they all come together, but let's just say they do, and with a bang. To give an idea of the kind of subtlety Cunningham displays, let me give one example: Lara Brown, the housewife, feels unconnected to her husband and 3 year old child and all she wants to do is finish reading Mrs. Dalloway. But, since it's her husband's birthday, she follows the expected role and tries to make him a fantastic cake. When the cake turns out to be amateurish and imperfect, she becomes almost suicidally depressed and decides to throw it out and start again. The scene continues, but the disappointment with the cake takes on a life of its own. Readers of To the Lighthouse will be reminded of the central dining scene when Mrs. Ramsey prepares a magnificant feast in much the same vein for her family. Cunningham's writing and grasp of Woolf is inspired -- I can see why he got the Pulitzer Prize. For those who criticize, be sure to catch up on your Woolf before nailing Cunningham to the cross. It's really a terrific book.