Rating: 
Summary: A work of art
Review: This novel is NOT a disservice to Virginia Woolf. It is, on the contrary, one of the highest compliments. But, putting aside the comparisons to Woolf, this novel stands on it's own merits from a post-modernist, post-formalist perspective. Its allusions, ironies, metaphors, and displacement make for an engrossing, almost hypnotic read. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who appreciates masterfully-written contemporary fiction.
Rating:
Summary: A well crafted novel
Review: So, you might begin reading The Hours and get into the book for a few chapters and think, "So what is the point?" There is no hard, driving plot, no lusty sex scenes, no simple writing that you can just skim over. Regardless, don't give up on this book!It is brilliant!Cunningham takes the lives of three women, Virgina Woolf, author extraordinare, Laura Brown, trapped housewife, and Clara, a lonely New York City Lesbian, and weaves their lives together. As Woolf lives out a day in her life, she mentally writes her famous novel Mrs. Dalloway. It is almost as if she is creating Clara and Laura as well. All women are simple perfectionists, leading ordinary and seemingly plain lives. But in the end only one of the three women are truly successful in living. By enduring hours of plainess, sadness or lonliness that we all find in each day, one woman is smart enough to seize the micromoments of joy, and make life incredible enough to live. Which one? You have to read to the end to find out.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Intricate and Well-Woven Web
Review: This book was very enjoyable. Easy enough to read in one long evening, or as I did in bits and pieces over three days. Cunningham does a wonderful job weaving three plots together to create a very complete work of fiction. The subject matter was contemporary, yet built an interesting bridge to the early 20th century at the same time. Years from now I will probably have to read this one again to bring back the richness of all of the characters, this isn't one that will stick with you for a lifetime, but it sure was enjoyable and very worthy of 4 stars.
Rating:
Summary: The Hours leaves you thinking
Review: I found this novel very enjoyable. It refers to homosexuality alot, so if you are offended by such content you should find a different book. However, I loved the novel and I had never read Mrs. Dalloway or any of Virginia Woolf's books. I had also never read a Michael Cunningham book. I read the novel in two days, I could NOT put it down!
Rating:
Summary: The Day They All Chose Life
Review: I first read this book some years ago, and I hadn't read "Mrs Dalloway" by that time. Now, after reading Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, it was much more pleasant to read "The Hours". Cunningham does not only make a homage to Mrs Dalloway, but also a reverence to Mrs Woolf and her unique style. The book follows one single day in the lives of three different women living in different times and places. At first we are introduced to Virginia Woolf herself, who is an artist creating her most daring work. She is still at the begining of her novel, so we can see her development process. The second women who steps into this book is Clarissa -- a.k.a. Mrs Dalloway, named after the character by her friend and ex-lover Richard. She is a gay editor who is organising a party for Richard. The last one we meet is Laura Brown, who has just started reading "Mrs Dalloway" and wants to make a cake to celbrate her husband's birthday. Page after page, these women got changed. Unexpected things crop up all the time. It's someone Clarissa meets at the park; it's Virginia's sister arriving earlier for a tea; it's Laura's neighbour asking her to look after a dog. Simple things that make them take small decisions, but decisions anyway. As the book focus on one single day in these women's lives, not very big events happen all the time. The charm and appeal in Cunningham's writing are the daily situations. Ordinary things that everybody does are charmly discribed. Buying flowers is much more than this single act, it's wondering about how Clarissa could have been a closer friend to the shop keep; the result of Laura's cake may reflect her vision of her life -- although it's very nice, it's not really the way she wanted it to be--; Virginia changes her mind all the time about what she should do to her character-- does Clarrissa Dalloway kill herself? has she got a lost love? The supporting characters step in and out of the book all the time, but they always leave some footsteps in the lives of our heroines. All of them have some problems and need the help of the main characters. It is the sick neighbour, or the sister worried about her kids, or a daughter and her friend. I think one of the most interesting thing that happens to all three main character is the fact that they kiss another woman, and this make tehm change their minds. It's not a love kiss, it is just a silly one, just lips. But the effects are much stronger. Virginia decides that har Mrs Dalloway will kiss a woman either; Laura thows the horrible cake in the trash can; and Clarissa... well, she is a gay, so kissing another woman changed her mind years ago. You may think it is a chick novel, but, definetely, it isn't. As a matter of fact, it is a book for grown ups, I don't mean you have to be old to get it, but you, surely, need some life experience in order to understand the character's fears and joys. What parent has never worried about a friend of his/her child (such as Clarissa, who does not like Mary Krull)? Or who has never wanted to give up his/her whole life a try something completely different as Laura and Virginia somehow? Many people may feel a bit down after reading the book. Although the very begining and the last chapters deal with death, the book as a whole shows why we should choose life instead of just letting death take us. Even though Mrs Woolf has killed herself, she does not do it in that day. And we also learn near the end that Laura tried to kill herself either, but it didn't happen in the day told in the book. So 'the hours' of the described day are for celebrating life, more than this, they are to celebrate the option of choosing life! All in all, it is an important book and I think that it deserves every single prize it won -- Pulitzer included. And more than this, it is a novel that deserves to be discovered more and more. If you haven't read "Mrs Dalloway" yet, you can enjoy "The Hours" a lot, but you'll feel very tempted to so afterwards.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great
Review: I really enjoyed reading this book for my intro college english course. It was a fairly easy read and the mutiple stroy lines were very intresiting. Howevere I WOULD NOT read this book without reading Mrs. Dalloway first. I am giving Cunningham only 4 stars, because I liked Mrs. Dalloway better. Still it was a book worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, unique good read
Review: The Hours was an enjoyable and challenging book which alternated among 3 sets of characters in each chapter. This one is not brain candy, but a true novel that makes you think. Each set of characters is unsatisfied with some element of life. The characters were very alive with real emotion: the frustration of the suburban mother who just wants to be alone to read; the confusion of a lesbian mother who feels like a sell-out; the emotional breakdown of an author who is both brilliant and fragile. I absolutely loved the ending of this book. Definitely worth reading, but not my favorite book that I plan to re-read.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: "The Hours" is a tour-de-force of modern fiction. It describes the lives of three seemingly different women at different times in life. Virginia Woolf in the 1920s, Laura Brown in the late 1940s, and Clarissa Vaughn in present day. It would be simplistic to say this novel is only about depression and being gay, as other reviewers may have unfairly labeled it. Being gay has nothing to do with anything. It is simply who some of the characters are- it is neither defining nor constricting to them. "The Hours" is about women and men not able to handle life anymore and unwilling to continue trying. It is also about love. Clarissa has the love of Sally (and Julia, her 19-yr old daughter, in a teenaged-way) and therefore, she seems the most grounded character. Virginia has the love of her husband and sister, but it is an overprotective, practically parental kind of love. Laura's husband and son also love her, but their love suffocates her and eventually drives her away. The love of Laura's life ultimately turns out to be books, as is Virginia's. These women are fascinating, sad, and very intelligent. However, they all feel intense guilt for their depression and misery and this is what is most harrowing. This book is creative in that, like Russell Banks' "The Sweet Hereafter," Cunningham does spectacular things with overlapping time and carrying details over from one character's life to another. While Mrs. Woolf writes about a character named Clarissa in "Mrs. Dalloway," Clarissa Vaughn of present day is living an almost parallel existence, as is Laura Brown. People complain this book has one-sided characters. This is unfounded. No, Cunningham did not delve into Virginia Woolf's childhood past; that story is not what this book is about and extensive details such as those would clearly succeed in dragging the book down. For anyone who has experienced even the slightest tinge of depression, you will understand and relate to these characters as though they were yourself. That's how well Cunningham depicts them; that's how well he fleshes them out. The guilt they feel as a result of depression is absolutey at the core of their souls and it is what drives them to do what they eventually must do. Lastly, the heartbreaking character of Richard is the key to whole novel. He is Clarissa's gay friend who is dying from AIDS. Once a recognized poet and writer, he has degenerated into a weak, sickly, depressed man who is ultimately alone. Yes, Clarissa is his best friend and the love of his life, but a platonic love. Mrs. Woolf, in writing "Mrs. Dalloway," creates several sweet moments in the novel for her character, Clarissa Dalloway, that actually also occur between Clarissa Vaughn and Richard in present time, creating one of several connections between them and Mrs. Woolf (and Laura Brown). Richard knows he is dying and since he can't stand living through one more 'hour' awaiting his impending death, having to endure more pain and self-hatred, he too takes his life, just like Mrs. Woolf, also a celebrated writer. Although I explained this in a roundabout fashion, this is what I meant when I stated Cunningham does spectacular things with overlapping and connecting all the characters from different time frames throughout the book. This is a rich, involving, original novel. Again, Cunningham, like Banks, is a master of emotions and making his readers experience these dark, harsh feelings right there along with his characters. "The Hours" is an excellent novel and well-deserving of the Pulitzer.
Rating: 
Summary: good riddance
Review: This much praised, award-winning novel is essentially an extended riff on Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, which is unreadable, while The Hours is merely unenjoyable. After an opening scene where Woolf commits suicide by walking into a river with a rock in her pocket, Cunningham intertwines three storylines : a day in the life of Virginia Woolf as she is at work on Mrs. Dalloway; a day in the life of Laura Brown, a pregnant suburban Los Angeles mother with a three year old son, a war hero husband, and a desperate longing to escape her suffocating life; and a day in the life of Clarissa Vaughn, a middle aged lesbian book editor in Greenwich Village who is planning a party for her friend and former lover Richard, who is dying of AIDs but has just won a prestigious poetry prize. Both Clarissa and his Mother are central characters in Richard's poetry and his novel. Beyond the fact that they are all gay and suicidal, these are simply not characters who think and behave like the rest of us. At one point Clarissa, who was nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway years before by Richard, meets her friend Walter, a despised author of gay romance novels, who dresses too youthfully for people's taste, and adorns himself with beautiful young men : 'Nice to see you,' Walter says. Clarissa knows--she can practically see--that Walter is, at this
moment, working mentally through a series of intricate calibrations regarding her personal
significance. Yes, she's the woman in the book, the subject of a much-anticipated novel by an
almost legendary writer, but the book failed, didn't it? It was curtly reviewed; it slipped silently
beneath the waves. She is, walter decides, like a deposed aristocrat, interesting without being
particularly important. She sees him arrive at his decision. She smiles. Now we do all know the Walters of the world, the coworker whose attention wanders if a boss walks by and you can see him thinking, "Hey, there's someone more important I could be talking to." But do you befriend these people and invite them to parties? Of course not, they are too transparently phony. The problem in this book however is that everyone is phony; they are all playing roles; after all, homosexuality itself is ultimately little more than a pose. Virginia Woolf has only a tenuous grip on sanity; Laura Brown shares a brief moment of passion with another woman and longs to escape her marriage; Richard plays at being the great poet, though he and Clarissa are conscious of the fact that much of his reputation rests on his homosexuality and his disease; Clarissa, despite decades of a loving relationship with another woman, loves Richard, who, despite his decades of homosexuality, loves her. This is a world of artificiality. People do and say things for effect, like reading and praising Virginia Woolf, and not because the actually believe in what they say or do. Clarissa has never had a Quarter Pounder--it simply isn't done--who do you know whose identity is held hostage to the idea that you can't eat at McDonalds? More importantly, who do know, and like, that looks down on eating at McDonalds. If you plan on reading the book, please read no farther, the following will betray some of the key "surprises" of the plot. several reviewers referred to the surprising ways in which Cunningham ties the three plots together at the end of the book, but they can be surprising only to someone who is not paying attention. Richard naturally turns out to be the Virginia Woolf doppelganger and upon his suicide, the funeral is attended by his mother, Laura Brown. (An aside : one of the central activities that is used to show the emptiness of Laura's life back in the 40s is her rather sketchy attempt to bake a cake for her husband's birthday. This, combined with her unhappy mewlings, was so reminiscent of the horrid song MacArthur Park--"someone left a cake out in the rain and I don't thing that I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it..."--that I found it hard to take her seriously.) The title, The Hours (which was also the original title of Mrs. Dalloway), and the essential outlook of the book are explained when Clarissa finds Richard perched on a windowsill in his apartment, about to leap to his death : He says, 'I don't know if I can face this. You know. The party and the ceremony, and then the
hour after that, and the hour after that.' 'You don't have to go the party. You don't have to go to the ceremony. You don't have to do
anything at all.' 'But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one
and then, my god, there's another.' Without sounding to harsh, let me just state my opinion that if you really think life is so awful that it just consists of a struggle to get through the hours of the day, you probably should commit suicide; it's hard to see how you are any great loss to the rest of us. GRADE : F
Rating: 
Summary: 3-in-1
Review: I felt myself to be at a disadvantage after reading other reviews, lacking in knowledge of Virginia Woolfe's background. For that reason, I don't think the novel spoke as clearly to me, although Ms. Woolfe was my favorite character of all. The author weaves three characters together, visiting each with their unique personalities, until they join together at the ending chapter. I found myself frequently wondering how Mr. Cunningham found his way to such a novel approach. However, I probably would not reread THE HOURS, for all its vivid imagery, from dead sparrows to roses. I couldn't seem to locate the depth in those who lived among the pages.
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