Rating: 
Summary: too contrived
Review: I thought this book did a disservice to Virginia Woolfe by transposing her brilliant and poignant novel (Mrs. Dalloway) onto a modern day plot. Substituting character names, locations, and various major and minor sub-texts (AIDS in place of post-war trauma; a movie star in place of a queen) does not create an original novel (or even a thought-provoking sequel). I don't think you can "cover" literature in the same way you can cover a song.The other two sections of the book, which dealt with the 50's housewife who read Mrs. Dalloway, and the fictional account of V. Woolfe writing the novel, were much more enjoyable and well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Sensitive, Fascinating Parallel of Three Women's Lives
Review: The Hours by Michael Cunningham is perhaps one of the best contemporary novels that I've read, and it is certainly easy to see why it won a Pulitzer Prize. The novel follows three women -- one, an editor in present-day Greenwich Village, one a post-WWII housewife, and Virginia Woolf, who is the thread that binds this story together. Cunningham has done a fantastic job of writing from a woman's perspective; he has really gotten into the psyche of these two women and has thoughtfully speculated a dialogue for Woolf as she is writing her novel Mrs. Dalloway. Cleverly utilizing names and plot devices from Woolf's stories Mrs. Dalloway and her concept of "a-room-of-one's-own," Cunningham has created a truly unique story with well-crafted parallels. Present-day Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her ailing friend Richard, who has just won a major literary award for his poetry. Laura Brown is the housewife struggling to find a sense of herself outside of the role of mother and wife. Cross-cutting glimpses or each life, along with Woolf's, Cunningham manages to pull these three women's lives together in a climax that is sure to leave you goose-pimpled and applauding. Reading The Hours is made easier if you are already familiar with Woolf's work -- especially Mrs. Dalloway. There are also many striking images that appear and reappear through each woman's life, most notably the yellow rose. I would like to sit down with Cunningham and ask about the significance of all the yellow roses throughout this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: It Takes Your Breath Away
Review: 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...
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Novel About The Struggles Of Life
Review: I will try not to sound prejudiced. Michael Cunningham wrote a novel which seems as if forged by a woman's mind. Reading the emotional heartache and struggle, one would think a woman wrote this book. But Michael Cunningham is superb, psychological, profound. He definately knows Virgina Woolf, who had a life full of emotional crisis, who gave the literary world stream-of-conscious novels and beautiful writing. Virginia Woolf's verbage was always striking. In "The Hours" ( the title suggests the theme- the hours of our lives must be taken seriously, enjoyed, to really LIVE THEM), Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep in the movie) is a strong, independent 50 plus woman who is married to an author dying of AIDS who also happens to have some mental disorders. She is preparing to throw a party for his honor. At the same time, we look back at 1950's suburbia where a pregnant Laura Brown and her son prepare a cake for her husban'ds birthday. Virginia Woolf, in the English countryside, is brainstorming to write her short story, "Mrs. Dalloway". For those who have read Virginia Woolf and in particular, "Mrs. Dalloway" the series of events that occur in "The Hours" should strike a familiar bell. Mrs. Dalloway reappears in the lives of Laura Brown, specifically, but one can make the argument that Clarissa Vaugn is also Mrs. Dalloway's reincarnation. The tragic parts express human suffering, particularily the sadness of loss, the poignancy of living with a terminal illness, the fleeting sense of living. The lives of the characters are complex, vivid and remarkably true to life. Cunningham will be a noteworthy writer on my list. Some of the things are very dark, but poignant. The contemplation of death and life, transience, loss and the madness and despair at human nature is best expressed with Virginia Woolf's eccentric, melancholic persona. Two suicides in the book. Virginia Woolf said it best, "To look life in the face- to love it. And then to put it away."
Rating:
Summary: A new treasure
Review: In Michael Cunningham's "The Hours" we are subjected to the marriage of fiction and historical appreciation at its finest. I picked this book up because I wanted to read the story before I saw the movie, but I now know that I never want to tarnish the beauty of this experience by watching Hollywood's theatrical version. Cunningham brilliantly paints a picture of one day in the lives of three different women in three different era's. First is Virginia Woolf, famous and eccentric writer, plagued by her past and a mind she can't control. While under the watchful care of her husband, who removes her from London in the 1920's in the hope of saving her from her "disease", she begins working on her piece, "Mrs. Dalloway". Then there is the present day Clarissa Vaughan, who creeps into the visions created by Virginia's mental weakness and helps shape the famous literary character, Clarissa Dalloway. Clarissa Vaughan has even been nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway" by her ex-lover and friend, Richard, due to her likeness of the character, which leaves one wondering, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Caught up in the middle of this weaving tale is Laura Brown, a 1950's housewife battling her own conflicts and reading Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway". Her gentle existence, though seemingly not outstanding at first, becomes the force that pulls the tendrils of Cunningham's philosophies into order and existence. All three characters face similar battles; mental and physical illnesses (either of themselves or loved ones), the social barriers and private emotions of homosexuality, the confines of domestic responsibilities and expectations, the preoccupation of death. Cunningham constructs this story so smoothly that it's hard to put down. When I first heard of his book I assumed it would be somewhat awkward to read; shifting back and forth between decades and characters while trying to somehow find their commonality, but his craft is flawless and the story flows beautifully. His style is comforting because it blends together new and abstract ideas with familiar detail and images of everyday objects. I truly believe that any fiction reader will be amazed by this book. The talent of twisting a relatively preordained pattern of reading into something this fresh and intriguing is so hard to find. I think a lot of readers will find some of their most private struggles and unnamed thoughts in these women. This story challenges what you will admit about yourself and brings you a little bit closer to a truth that you're not quite sure is out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a genuiniely feminist novel
Review: I've had to read this book twice in graduate school, and even though I'm a feminist, I can't stand this book. Cunningham gives us melodramatic characters who don't think like normal people. While the 3-part structure of the book is impressive, I don't feel close to these women at all. I especially can't stand how Cunningham wrote the Laura Brown character. He tries to justify her abandonment of her family based on her artistic longings. In real life we would advise such a woman to get a job, or a divorce, anything but walking out on her family. Laura should face the consequences of her past decisions about marriage and child-rearing and realize that parents can psychologically scar their children. You can argue that the post WWII era entrapped her, but my grandmother didn't remain a housewife. She went back to teaching while her children grew up, so it was an option. Instead of showing proactive women who face their problems with courage, Cunningham gives us Woolf and Laura, who cave in to their sadness and flee their problems. A truly feminist book would have offered the characters better solutions instead of the all-or-nothing approach. Laura ends up looking like an extremely selfish person, and many readers don't like her. This book promotes a brand of feminism that is not only selfish but harmful to the characters' loved ones. This is not good PR for feminists.
Rating:
Summary: Emotional, But Rewarding
Review: A person (the snob one, the one who can scan a book without moving his lips) commented to me once how mediocre this book is. "Absolutely mediocre," he said, "I just read it because of the movie." After finishing Cunningham's book, THE HOURS, I felt the need to agree with my friend, but only for a fraction. There's nothing wrong with the book, really, but I suppose the intellectual reader would still brand it dull and overly emotional. The book, after-all, is a study (a brilliant one, let me add) of three women's lives- their daily frustrations, their wants and needs that can't be earned no matter how one tries so hard. (Melo-dramatic, is it not? quite soap-operatic?) But Cunningham is a loveable writer, and here he suceeded and gave us a masterpiece that could have been worst. This is a highly readable novel, a novel both for the curious and the gifted, a book that you'll love for sure. Cunningham's Richard is the ultimate modern-day tragic hero. Here he created a character that is a source of pain, only pain, a Virginia Woolf re-incarnation of some sort. But Richard's pain, the author reminds us, is not one brought by his sexuality or illness but by the past, brought by rejection and how this rejection shattered the life of a supposedly brilliant man. In a way, THE HOURS, is a meditation of the past, a rememory, a re-living. And there's nothing mediocre about it. (NOTE: In addition, read THE BLACKWATER LIGHTSHIP by Tolm Coibin)
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Meditation on Life...Love...Death
Review: I loved MRS. DALLOWAY and I loved THE HOURS. I think it's a beautiful book, though I don't think it is necessarily meant to be written in the exact "stream of consciousness" style as is MRS. DALLOWAY.
THE HOURS tells the interwoven story of three women: the writer, Virginia Woolf, a 1950s housewife named Laura Brown and a present day woman, Clarissa Vaughan. Laura is obsessed with reading MRS. DALLOWAY just as Woolf is obsessed with writing it. Clarissa is obsessed with giving her friend, Richard, a poet dying of AIDS, the "perfect party," just as Clarissa Dalloway was obsessed with the perfect party. Richard, the reader will come to learn, will be the slender thread that eventually connects Clarissa to Laura.
One of the things I found so beautiful, and so remarkable about this novel were the seamless transitions from one character's narrative to another's. Cunningham has written perhaps the most fluid and beautifully intertwining of narratives I've ever encountered.
I've read and heard criticism of this book because it does not strictly follow the rules of "stream of consciousness." I'm not sure it was meant to and I can't fault it for not doing so. Pure "stream of consciousness," of course, follows, not just the main character's thoughts but also the thoughts of others in relation to the narrator. In THE HOURS, we get only Woolf's thoughts in her narrative. In Laura's narrative, we read only her thoughts. In Clarissa's narrative, Cunningham gives us not only Clarissa's thoughts but also the thoughts of one of her party guests and here, Cunningham is writing "stream of consciousness" as Woolf wrote it...to a much lesser degree. But, I have to ask, does this lack of "pure" stream of consciousness diminish THE HOURS or lessen Cunningham's homage to Woolf? I am not sure. I think the book would have been strengthened and enriched had Cunningham woven the thoughts of the other characters around the thoughts of Woolf, Laura and Clarissa, but THE HOURS is so seamless and beautiful in its structure and execution that I can't fault Cunningham for neglecting, or choosing not, to do this.
The only other quibble I have with the book is the fact that everyone seemed to either prefer same-sex relationships or at least have leanings in that direction. What are the chances of that? Not many, I think. I was most annoyed by Laura's experimentation with her neighbor. It just seemed to ring a very false note with me. But that, as I said, is nothing more than a quibble.
It seems striking to me that Cunningham chose to write THE HOURS sans the final party scene. This is the scene in which Woolf showcases her pure stream of consciousness to the fullest and it's the place where Cunningham could have done the same. I have to wonder if Cunningham thought he lacked the narrative sophistication and fluidity to accomplish this (a very difficult task) or whether he simply chose not to do so, feeling that the party inclusion would make THE HOURS seems too contrived. Not knowing the answer, I can't fault him for his choice.
I was going to award THE HOURS four stars based on the above, but it is so beautiful, so seamless, so structurally perfect as it is, that I can't justify awarding it any less than five. This is a beautiful, but harrowing, book that is also a meditation on life...on love...on art and, finally, on death. I think any lover of experimental or literary fiction couldn't help but love it.
Rating:
Summary: Just... beautiful
Review: i am always surprised by male authors who write women so honestly and well; and Cunningham is no exception. The Hours is a gorgeously written novel of three intertwining stories of three women in three different eras. I don't feel like i can do it any sort of justice, so i will just tell you that it is absolutely brilliant, and should be a mandatory read for the entire nation, a new classic
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Homage to Woolf.
Review: This is the first novel in many years that I was motivated to read after viewing its film adaptation. The film of the same name is a work of art, though the novel surpasses the picture in terms of its depth, subtlety and intelligent imitation and homage to Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway. As this was the author's stated intent, to my mind, he was wholly successful. Particularly the Dalloway chapters, it was if I was reading a 21st century version of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece. This novel is a superb piece of writing. Cunningham evokes the thoughts, impressions and inner feelings of his three main characters and their unique associations, and cleverly connects them by way of prosaic nuance and understated references to Woolf's novel. In fact, there are so many connections between the two novels, it would require several readings to find them all. This is a true literary achievement because Cunningham's execution, on the surface, seems effortless. His prose is liquid, flowing in and out of the minds and circumstances of each character with empathy, intense sensitivity and realism. However, the book's real achievement is the reader does not necessarily need to have an acquaintance with Mrs. Dalloway in order to appreciate Cunningham's incredible novel. That said, having read Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, viewing the film more than once, and now having read Cunningham's novel, my appreciation and understanding of all three has become much richer as a result. Woolf's battle with mental illness and her exploration on the boundaries between 'insanity'and what we've come to believe as 'sanity', and her views on suicide, for example, have become a lot clearer to me after reading The Hours. All three works are major triumphs in themselves, but have managed to end up complimenting each other in insightful ways. My suggestion would be to read this elegant novel, read Woolf's masterpiece, and see the film again. If time doesn't permit or you're not inclined to do so, at least read this novel, it will be well worth your time.
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