Rating: 
Summary: the hours
Review: how in the world did this book win the pulitzer? must have been due to its political-correctness. the atmosphere is one of cloying paranoia and excessive emotions, welling in every character at every encounter. the plot mires in the--granted, well-written--trope-laden, cynical, omniscient perspective: tropes of characters' perceptions that are not really enlightening (and therefore distracting, _because_ they aren't applicable), just admirably elaborate and detailed.these flaws are, i think, alluded to by the author in a couple of revealing asides: "Richard produces a novel that _meditates exhaustively on a woman (a fifty-plus-page chapter on shopping for nail polish, which she decides against!)" (page 126, picador q.p.b.); and "It feels like it's about ten thousand pages long. _Nothing happens_. And then, _bam_. She kills herself. . . "You're in perfect agreement with almost every critic. _They'd waited all that time, and for what_? More than 900 pages of flirtation, really, with a sudden death at the end. People did say it was beautifully written."(page 130, ibid.) (emphases mine, except for the "bam.") in the case of _the hours_, the chapter is a 26-plus-page chapter on shopping for flowers, which she decides _for_; as for _the hours_ being "beautifully written," i'll concede that some of the amazingly out of place tropes are. but, _the hours_ has gay, lesbian, and AIDS-positive characters (most, of course, wildly successful in their own--or others'--professional lives). it's just all too pat, and all too p.c., and . . . the _pulitzer_, for god's sake.
Rating: 
Summary: The hours: bypassing time
Review: e-mail:....com.br. Michael Cunningham's book, The Hours, struck me as an extremely clever parody of a masterpiece. When I say parody, I don't mean a humorous imitation of a text, intended to ridicule it, but a re-creation of a previous work of art, especially a canonical one, in a way that helps the parodist deal with that legacy of the past, mainly, when this leagacy seems to be daunting for the new artist. A parody bypasses the gap of time and space between two writers and their work. And this is what, in my opinion, Cunningham does in his book. He weaves his story by mixing up scraps of information on Virginia Woolf's life and suicide, obviously with no intention of writing another biographical book on her (a fact that leaves him plenty of room to revisit or reinvent the events preceding her death), her characters (above all the main character) in the novel Mrs. Dalloway and characters of his own design to address mostly the same topics that pervade Mrs. Dalloway, namely the inexorability of time, the elusiveness of sheer happiness, the futility of life, the fine dividing line between life and death, love and sex, and, especially true love and sexual attraction. These issues have been the concern of philosophers and artists throughout the times and no definite solution has been presented. When re-working the metaphysical dilemmas that affect the characters in Mrs. Dalloway and obviously Mrs. Woolf herself, Cunningham suggests different alternatives and choices. Homosexuality, for instance, is addressed more openly by Cunningham. Whereas Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway remains heterosexual according to most definitions, irrespective of a sudden impulse in her youth that made her kiss her girlfriend once, in the The Hours, Clarissa's ever lasting love for Richard and vice-versa is based on the fact that they do not get married and both have homosexual preferences. Even so, Clarissa's partnership with Sally works out perhaps precisely because there's no true love between them. There is a certain coherence, and predictability even, in the way both Cunningham and Woolf treat the death drive which Virginia actually gave way to in her life. Madness haunted Virginia and another spell of the illness was foreshadowed by her and she made a choice for self-termination. In The Hours, Richard is the one who is losing his grip and fluctuates between consciousness and fantasy. Richard had written a novel, the character of which is a blatant reference and homage to Clarissa, and it seems, is named after her. Unlike the two other 'Clarissas,' in Richard's novel, his protagonist commits suicide. As a matter of fact, almost all characters in both books experience some kind of self-destructive impulse, and they all court life and death. Each one makes a choice, and each choice may be understood. All these characters seek to find a meaning to their lives, and Cunningham's Clarissa realises that the memory of one single elusive moment of sheer happiness makes life worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the Time
Review: Michael Cunningham's novel is a beautifully written and highly engaging narrative. Though readers of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway might take extra pleasure in charting the connections bewteen the 2 novels, Cunningham's Hours stands entirely on its own. If you enjoy smart, well-crafted and emotionally/intellectually satisfying fiction for grown-ups, then this is the novel for you. Of course, if you're of the mind --like other reviewers here--that a novel w/any lesbian or pseudo-lesbian characters is automatically "agenda fiction," then you'll probably want to take a pass. The only "agenda" Cunningham seems to have here is providing us w/complex, multi-faceted characters who are trying to figure out who they are and where they're going in a world determined to constrain and confound them... and he does so with tremendous grace, compassion, and intelligence. If you like to expand your world--rather than narrow it--then The Hours is a book you'll want to read. You might also want to check out Robin Lippincott's Mr. Dalloway, to see another gifted writer working with the legacy of Virginia Woolf's amazing novel.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful read
Review: I loved this book. At first it was very hard for me to get into; but once I dove in, it was head first. I think my favorite part was the very end, which seemed to bring the whole book into more of a perspective. I guess I should say, I never read Mrs. Dalloway or saw this movie, as of yet. I read it with no pre-conceived notions. It was well worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: The (boring) Hours
Review: This book is totally contrived and I cannot BELIEVE it won the Pulitzer. What a bunch of drivel.
Rating:
Summary: Better than I expected
Review: I picked this up after seeing the film and loving it - a habit I generally try to avoid because the larger-than-life allure of the cinema tends to flood the perceptions and overwhelm anything that can be constructed on the page. This proved to be the case when I sat down with the "The Hours" - in my mind, Meryl Streep was inevitably Clarissa, Nicole and Her Nose were inevitably Virginia - but the novel has its own charms which can't be entirely translated into a film - or at least not in quite the same way.
I
approached this novel afraid it was going to be "literary" in the worst sense - earnest, self-conscious, in love with its own linguistic virtuosity, and sprinkled with exquisite faux profundities throughout. Actually, "The Hours" is almost guilty of all these charges - while reading it, I was thinking, "Oooh, you're treading a tightrope there, buddy, don't stumble, don't embarrass yourself, don't get sentimental...Hey, that's it! That's beautiful! Phew" - but somehow it redeems itself.
I had these prejudices because of the film, which, like the book, teeters precariously on the brink of being maudlin and pretentious, a weepy for middle-aged women with vague literary notions - but, again, somehow redeems itself through the sheer beauty of the cinematography and the subtlety and earthiness of the three starring actresses. The Hours" is only occasionally weighed down with the kind of affectations and self-consciousness that occasionally renders Woolf's work difficult; mostly, it's a generous, readable, quietly witty and genuinely insightful book that actually deserves the hyperbolic praise so liberally tossed around by critics. (The prose IS actually kind of "luminous" and "exquisite" and "multi-layered", from time to time, believe it or not.) Don't be intimidated; you can read this one in a lovely, reflective afternoon.
Rating:
Summary: Ambitious literary pageturner
Review: Michael Cunningham has done an ambitious thing with his novel, The Hours. He has taken Virginia Woolf's classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway, sliced it into thirds, painted each third a different color, and reassembled them, presenting them on a tray for our literary pleasure. That's not to say that it's a bad book, in fact the opposite. It is one of the best I've read recently, and certainly one of the most ambitious. (The Pulitzer Prize committee certainly thought enough of it to award it their prize for fiction published in 1998.) Cunningham's prose is the star here, as this narrative is composed almost entirely of inner thoughts. The three main characters--author Virginia Woolf, housewife Laura Brown, and modern "Mrs. Dalloway" Clarissa Vaughan--are somewhat similar in make-up, but that is part of the point. Cunningham has taken Mrs. Dalloway and extrapolated it to different women in different time periods. The two "fictional" women (not counting the fictionally-presented Ms. Woolf) are bound together by the fact that both are preparing a party for a loved one. That these women are connected in yet another way is stunningly disclosed very near the end. I really enjoyed The Hours. It is one of the few "literary" fictions that I found to be a real page-turner, and I finished it in a day and a half. That certainly speaks for its mass appeal, and I hope that others--particularly other men, as its main readership appears to be women of the Oprah crowd--will seek it out and perhaps even use it as a doorway to read Mrs. Dalloway. One thing, however, as the book is mostly composed of inner thoughts, I'm with the author in wondering how they're going to make a movie based on it. I haven't seen the film yet, but there is all sorts of Oscar buzz surrounding director Stephen Daldry and stars Nicole Kidman (Virginia Woolf), Meryl Streep (Clarissa Vaughan), and Julianne Moore (Laura Brown). But, even so, I think any film adaptation could only pale in comparison to the original source material. After all, we all know that the book is always better than the movie, don't we?
Rating: 
Summary: Cold.
Review: An inspired book about women by a man. What else is new? I wanted to say, again and again - "A woman wouldn't say...do...that." It's really a gay book about gay men, I think. Even the gay women are more like gay men. The movie's better. I recommend it, except for Nicole Kidman's ridiculously bulbous, clown-like nose. Virginia Woolf had a lovely, noble Roman nose. HEL-LO, HOLLYWOOD! The book is an attempt to copy Mrs. Dalloway, a brilliant, light-filled, organic work of art. This is a contrivance. Still, it is obviously inspired. And it's made a splash. But the book underwhelmed me, unlike my reading of the real Mrs. Dalloway, which I adored. By the way, the best section is about Mrs. Brown...I wished the whole book was about her.
Rating:
Summary: What was the purpose of this book?
Review: I try, I really do. I read the hyped books and the ones that win awards. I NEVER like them. I wonder why? Probably because they are boring books and never really go anywhere. Or the subject is
so esoteric and contrived that it seems the purpose of writing is
for the author to snare some award. What was the purpose of The Hours? A shared love of Virginia Wolff? No plot, no climax, no "anything." It was a waste of
my hour to read it.
Rating:
Summary: average read
Review: I brought this book because I had heard great reviews from the movie. I can't say the book was bad at all, especially because Cunnigham has an extremely unique style of writing. However, it did seem to work against him at times. The book is descriptive and captures the raw emotions and thoughts of each character, but it is filled with paradoxes and can be quite boring to read. I would recommend giving it a try, but clearly not a novel that many may enjoy.
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