Rating: 
Summary: Gag Me
Review: An overrated hunk of pretentious drivel. Luckily, it only took me a few "hours" to read. I guess all you have to do to win over the critics is write a story in which a central character has AIDS. Then, write page after page of flowery prose all about everyone's "feelings" and "deep thoughts," ignoring the necessity of any kind of plot or interesting character development. If another one of the central characters were not a prestigious literary figure (Virginia Woolf), then this book would never have gotten anywhere -- it's as if the use of Virginia Woolf as a central character excused the author from having to write a story that is actually good by its own merit.
Rating: 
Summary: Well worth your time
Review: I just finished this book and I think it is absolutely one of the best books I have ever read. I enjoyed it all the way through and highly recommend reading it and taking your time to soak in all Cunningham's beautiful descriptive writing. This book will make you wish you could write like this incredible writer! Highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Cleverly written. A fascinating read.
Review: Cunningham received the Pen/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1999. We meet three women in this story. The first woman we meet is the author Virginia Wolff, living in London in the 1920'ies. We enter the story while she is writing "Mrs Dalloway". The second woman we meet, Laura Brown, is living in LA in the late 1940'ies, and reading "Mrs Dalloway". She is a 30'ish woman, married with one son, pregnant with child number two. She is the housewife struggling both with her self-image/identity, and with something as trivial as how to prepare the perfect cake for her husband's birthday. Slightly claustrophobic from the life that is closing in on her, she sets out driving, checking in to a hotel, just to be able to sit alone and read.. The third woman we meet is present day Clarissa Vaughn, a gay woman in her 50'ies, working as a literary agent and living in Greenwich Village. She is planning a party for her dying friend and ex-lover Richard. He has just received a major literary award, and Clarissa wants to celebrate the reward. What starts out as three separate stories, Cunningham masterfully weaves into one gripping story in the end. Very impressive! I had not read Mrs. Dalloway before reading this book and I know for sure that I would have enjoyed the book even more if I had been familiar with Virginia Wolff's writing prior to reading "The Hours". Because what to me in the beginning seemed to be meaningless jumping back and forth between three women, would instead probably have appeared to be elegant and seamless shifting between the three protagonists' stories. Having said that, I really enjoyed the book. I am going to read "Mrs Dalloway" and then re-read "The Hours". An enjoyable read!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and Poetic
Review: I loved this book. Michael Cunningham did a great job of describing women's feelings and inner thoughts. I had never read "Mrs. Dalloway", but I did after reading "The Hours". I found "The Hours" much easier and more pleasant to read. I suffered through reading "Mrs. Dalloway" only so I could fully appreciate how masterfully Michael Cunningham transformed it into "The Hours". The prose are poetic and the story while not uplifting is interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Not my cup of tea
Review: I have great respect for the fact that this book was probably brilliant, but for whatever reason, I could never get into it. It probably has something to do with the fact that there wasn't a whole lot going on. The book is primarily about relationships, and the nature of these relationships is revealed through a look inside the heads of the three protaganists, not through any action, or even much dialogue. Fortunately, it is short, so I was able to read the entire thing, despite my lack of enthusiasm. I did regret my half-hearted effort at the end, when a neat twist revealed itself. It probably didn't help that I haven't read the Virginia Wolff book "Mrs. Dalloway." Apparently, more brilliance would have been apparent to me if I had had some familiarity with that work as well.
Rating:
Summary: Kudos to Mr. Cunningham!
Review: The Hours is delicious, exhilarating & heartbreaking all at the same time. Easily, the best book I've read in a very long time. Mr. Cunningham, you're a master.
Rating:
Summary: A good story but won the Pulitzer????
Review: To do this story justice I will admit that I have never read Virginia Woolf and having said that, any reader is at a severe disadvantage if they have not read Mrs. Dalloway. The Hours, was apparently the working title for that novel.
Much of Cunningham's acclaim has stemmed from his ability to weave his story into the Mrs. Dalloway story line and create a fictional account of Virginia Woolf as she imagines the idea of Mrs. Dalloway, writes the novel and eventually commits suicide.
I found the story ordinary and at times tedious as I tried to make sense of these characters and the jumping back and forth between them and time periods. I kept reading and waiting for something to happen, for some turn of events that would tie everything together. I was finally vindicated in the end as Cunningham spectacularly did tie all his characters and events into an amazing web that was reaveled in the last ten pages of the book. But, is a read worth the last ten pages of a book?
I found his writing style poetic and his descriptions of characters unique in his observations. If I had been better versed in Virginia Woolf or had read Mrs. Dalloway, I may have enjoyed the story more or been able to appreciate Mr. Cunningham's clever parallel's in his story. As it stands, I found the book mildly enjoyable with a redeeming ending.
Rating:
Summary: A Service To Woolf At The Expense Of Originality
Review: The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, is an interesting story written in the style of Virginia Woolf. Anyone that admires Woolf's work, especially Mrs. Dalloway, will be able to appreciate Cunningham's extensive research into her life and Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham adroitly employs Woolf's voice in the three parallel stories that constitute the book, and he skillfully adds her symbols to his own characters' lives in ways that recall Woolf but manage to keep his own distinct personality.
Each of the individual three stories is meant to reverberate in the other two: one follows Woolf's own difficulty with severe depression during the creation of Mrs. Dalloway; the second surrounds a modern day Clarissa Dalloway as she prepares a party for her homosexual poet-friend with AIDS; the last looks a Laura Brown, a homemaker in 1950's suburban California who internalizes the imagery in Mrs. Dalloway as a way to escape her dissatisfaction with her family life.
Clarissa's narrative is the dominant of the three. As we trail her through New York City while she finalizes all the last-minute touches for her party, any reader who is remotely familiar with Mrs. Dalloway will be able to see the obvious references to the book. Although Cunningham has nailed the tone of Woolf's style and has a sound interpretation of Mrs. Dalloway, this part of the story ultimately feels too contrived, as if Cunningham has willingly sacrificed his own style in order to adopt Woolf's. It is also strange to apply Woolf's themes of social class and disillusionment to today's world of homosexuality, celebrity and sickness. The differences in the themes are so great that they cannot be combined in any satisfying manner. In other words, it is nearly impossible to translate Mrs. Dalloway into a present-day environment due to the nature of its ideas. Consequently, this narrative proves to be the driest of the three.
The narrative involving Woolf herself is more engaging simply because it involves more creativity on Cunningham's part, as there is no model to base Woolf's inner monologue on. The fact that the narrative begins at the end of Woolf's life makes it that much more interesting to slowly piece together the events that brought her to the bank of the final river. Cunningham excels at probing his characters' minds, and Woolf proves to be a prime subject thanks to her well-known cerebral disposition.
The least explored of the three storylines is that of Laura Brown. Sadly, this is the story I would have preferred to be the most fully developed. Because Laura is solely Cunningham's invention, she retains much of his own voice and is the only truly original creation in the entire book. Laura's own idolatry of Mrs. Dalloway enhances Cunningham's subtle usage of symbolism, therefore discreetly joining his own writing to Woolf's. Cunningham's Clarissa is too much a part of Woolf to be novel to the reader; Laura provides a fresh breath as she comes to grips with her own insufficiencies as a wife and mother. By taking Woolf's themes but leaving the characters behind, Cunningham succeeds in producing something unique that still manages to take root in Woolf. Unfortunately, Laura's life is quickly and insufficiently pulled together at the end of the book and leaves some large gaps unbridged.
Altogether, The Hours is a great tribute to Virginia Woolf. However, the book is not flawless, and those that aren't too knowledgeable about Mrs. Dalloway might miss some of the key structural and symbolic messages in the stories. Yet despite this, readers seeking a new approach to a classic will not be disappointed. Overall, Woolf would be proud.
Rating:
Summary: Woolf and Cunnighham; Best of Both Worlds
Review: Michael Cunningham seamlessly blends the premise to "Mrs. Dalloway" while adding in his own elements, creating a book that is both a pleasure to read while thought provoking. I had not read anything of his before, but was led to it after reading literature by Virginia Woolf. I was blown away not only by the images he was able to evoke, but by his ability to create a storyline that allows the reader to become hooked into it, no matter how distant the premise was. He manages to connect and relate the three women without using the usual and obviuos ploys. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible and annoying
Review: Words cannot describe how much this book annoyed me. I cannot fathom how it possibly won two major awards ... I guess that just goes to show that the award committees are only human, and are capable of error as much as anyone. To begin, I still have a headache from having the theme dropped onto my head like so many anvils, all throughout the book. This book is about Hours! The hours! The passing of time! The fading of beauty! The transcience of beauty! The passing THROUGH time from virility to death! About this painful passage through time and how do we survive all these hours?! Do you get it? Can you understand? Do I need to mention hours again? If Mr. Cunningham thinks his readers are so dumb as to need to have this pounded into our heads again and again and again, then perhaps he needs to write for children. Furthermore, I do not agree with those who say the characters are all so well developed. There was no differentiation between the three main characters; they all spoke with the same morbid, self-absorbed voice. And, I suspect if we were to meet Mr. Cunningham, we'd find that to be his own morbid, self-absorbed voice. Maybe this is a book only a pessimist can love. Some reviewers have said that anyone who has been through a depression will feel the ring of truth to this book - that's malarky. This book isn't about depression. It feels like a book written by a pessimist who is trying to write about optimism. It comes across as completely [misleading]. This book comes across as the literary equivalent of someone who wears nothing but gothic black, trying to convince us that everyone in the world dresses the same way. I could go on but mostly, I'm just glad it's such a quick read, and didn't take up more of my time. If you have a morbid, pessimisitic personality, give it a try. You might love it. But if you are a person who is capable of TRULY seeing beauty in the world - even, gasp!, in aging, in the passing of time - then run, don't walk, away from this book!!
|
