Rating: 
Summary: Believer
Review: When I first heard about this book, I didn't want to read it-- I was frankly uninterested in a male writer channeling Virginia Woolf. In the end, I read it for my book club. I did Cunningham a major disservice with my suspicion, because this book is both a worthy homage to Woolf and a moving novel in its own right._The Hours_ weaves together the lives of different women, illuminating the threads that link suicide, artistry, and failure. These links are made even stronger by the resonances between this book and _Mrs. Dalloway_. (I believe you can read this without having read _Mrs. Dalloway_, btw. It should stand on its own without problem.) Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Anyone Who Loves Woolf Will Love The Hours
Review: This was written by a man who loves Woolf and if you love her writing like I do then you'll thoroughly enjoy this novel. The writing is poetically charmed with emotion and wit. While following the stories of these three different touching women you'll slowly become aware of Virginia's famous rooks circling above their heads threatening death and change, terror and peace, permanence and rebirth. Mr Cunningham tugs at a spiritual thread that runs through their lives. You can feel it with the sincerest sympathy. Not only do you get a compelling portrait of the way our perception of women have changed over the century, but you feel the dilemmas of life's uncertainties in all their horror and beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful and Memorable
Review: A lovely elegaic, moving book. If you like character-driven novels depicting full, three-dimensional real people, read The Hours. If you love Virginia Woolf or remember Mrs. Dalloway fondly, this is a no-brainer -- you must read The Hours. It's a classically written work delving into the nature of our existence and our everyday lives. What inspires us? What keeps us going? So with that said, if you're not a fan of a novel unless it is a cliff-hanging, suspense novel in which things blow up and crimes are committed, then definitely definitely move on. Oh there is suspense (lots of it), but it is in more of a British novel vein (I know something has to happen, but gosh darn it, what? and when?), and Cunningham pays off. If you like the works of Woolf, Forster, Ishiguro, this is time well spent (pun intended). Worthy of its Pulitzer. Read through to the very end. The last two pages are amazing.
Rating:
Summary: An wonderfully woven text
Review: What an amazingly written text! I started this novel on the same day as three laborious final exams; I spent the remained of my evening reading it in its entirety. I found myself shouting audibly during the last chapter. It is well worth reading!
Rating: 
Summary: The Pulitzer?
Review: Michael Cunningham, The Hours (FSG, 1998) The Pulitzer? Cunningham was ignored for Flesh and Blood, and got the Pulitzer for this? There's only one explanation, and that's that the Pulitzer committe (which, it was recently pointed out, is made up of journalists) completely forgot the opening hundred seventy-five pages in the process of being stunned by the last fifty. Publisher's Weekly, in its review of The Hours, castigates Cunningham in a minor way for the scope of Flesh and Blood, and compares The Hours favoriably to that novel because The Hours is a little less than half as long. I can't argue with PW's assertion that The Hours shows that Cunningham can write a shorter novel that has the same power as Flesh and Blood did, but I can, and do, take issue with the inference that Flesh and Blood is a lesser book because of it. Where Flesh and Blood stayed in one general time frame and focused on one excellently-drawn extended family, The Hours cuts back and forth, paralleling the lives of Virginia Woolf in England, a fan of Virginia Woolf's who's in the process of reading Mrs. Dalloway, and the fan's son, who grows up to be an award-winning poet suffering from complications resulting from AIDS. When Cunningham focuses on his fictional creations, things are all well and good. The Hours contains many of the things that made Flesh and Blood a great novel-- Cunningham's powerful style of narrative, his willingness to go more deeply into the emotions of characters than most writers, an ability to pace his book that's unmatched in modern literature. Ironically, it's when Cunningham focuses on Virginia Woolf and her family that the characters stop being realistic. There's just not enough of them, and Cunningham's hero-worship of Woolf is too obvious. The end result is a novel inconsistent at best. When it's on its game, though, The Hours is a rollercoaster of a novel. The last fifty pages, especially, will be read at one clip, as Cunningham ties in the stories of the mother and son, and the grandiose prose used in the last few sections of the novel is more than deserved. This is a novel capable of bringing tears in its last pages. If the rest of the book had been firing on that many cylinders, it would have been a Pulitzer no-brainer, but as it stands, in the bulky shadow of its superior predecessor, one wonders if the committee weren't trying to right the mistake it had made in ignoring Flesh and Blood three years previous. ** 1/2
Rating:
Summary: Modern Day Mrs. Dalloway- AN EXCEPTIONAL MASTERPIECE
Review: Oh, what a wonderful and etopic work of art! -and even if you've seen the movie, read it anyway. The best advice I can give anyone.. READ MRS. DALLOWAY FIRST!... If you don't you will miss out on all the beutiful inuendos and mirror imaging of The Hours. I had not read the aforesaid work when I started this, in fact- before this book I despised Virginia Woolf- but I forced my self to stop reading 'The Hours' and complete Ms. D and what a great decision! I read, enjoyed and admired Mrs. Dolloway, reading it first made me better appreciate Cunningham's style, message and plot, I felt like I was in on a little secret shared only by me and the author! The best thing about the Hours is that it shows us how similar our lives our to our seemingly ancient, outdated and foreign ancestors. It it truly is a modern day version of Virginia's masterpiece and is totally intertwined with it. I think Michael Cunningham was in cahoots with Virginia's spirt when he wrote this! I so believe that if she were here to read this, she would endorse, celebrate and embrace 'The Hours'. After reading it, I have a better understanding of Woolf's writting style and was better able to appreciate other works of hers. More importanlty, I have a better understanding of the circle of life. Cunningham's tribute to Ms. Woolf was admirable and amazing. But his own talent eminated through this novel as well. He has incredible communicative skills and was able to tie three seperate and seemingly polar lives in such a creative and dramatic way. I was impressed by his talent and ablility to take contraversial topics (such as AIDS and homosexuality) and make them so ordinary and everday. It appeals to so many different classes, ages, genders, ideologies- It captivates so many audiences that I believe anyone who reads it will appreciate and relate to it's theme and characters. Most importantly, I think this novel shows us that even though every generation thinks themselves and thier struggles isolated and individualistic, really we are all the same. It made me realize that what I go through now, my great grandmother went through a hundred years ago and my great grandchildren will essentially go through 100 years from now. As much as we think WE have changed; really the only thing that has really changed is the hours that have passed.
Rating:
Summary: This is a novel about what it means to be a reader
Review: The Hours is an almost too clever set of variations on a theme, taken from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. It is a intricately contrived piece of fiction which plays with the issues of sexuality, suicide, suburban and urban living, the possibilities of women's lives, and the twinned activities of writing and reading. The stories (of three women) are set in different times and places: the 1920's in London, the 50's in LA and the 90's in Manhattan, each credibly evoked. But what appeals to me most about this eminently readable novel are the questions it raises about what happens to readers? What is the effect of a novel on its reader? That's what the story is really about.
Rating:
Summary: Cunningham proves writing is a wonderful art form!
Review: What can I add to all the accolades heaped on Michael Cunningham that isn't already said? Except to affirm that this book worked its magic on me in surprising ways and makes me believe that, in spite of all the pulp that calls itself "literature" in these days of mass market paperbacks...., it is still possible to a produce a book of remarkable quality such as this one. I haven't read any of Virginia Woolf's works and the subject matter of this book is not exactly the most accessible. Yet Cunningham has put together a novel that cleverly weaves the past with the present, fiction with fact, in language that is so singularly eloquent it is hard to imagine how anyone can improve on this work of art. What surprised me most is that, although neither a mystery nor a thriller, "The Hours" kept me turning the pages and I can attribute that only to Cunningham's consummate skills. This is one book I'll gladly re-read.
Rating:
Summary: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, or...
Review: ...A Cynical Feat of Plagiarism That Panders to the NY Literati? No, I plainly adore this short, carefully wrought, multiple-prize winning jewel of a novel. Cunningham inhabits Virginia Woolf, brings her back to us, dives deeply, languorously into character via Woolf's trademark reverie and reflection, gives us in the span of 227 brief pages a clutch of believable women and men, each teetering on the brink of a personal abyss. And yet, and yet. Not many chuckles here save an occasional wryly mordant observation, no hustle-bustle, no wasted energy--only a supremely wise, stately, moving, perfectly balanced and sequenced tableaux of setpieces that might have been subtitled "The Dalloway Variations." Many have pointed out, with surprise, that this...this MAN...writes female characters that thoroughly convince. Well, so do, of course, Henry James, Wallace Stegner, Brian Moore, Robertson Davies (when he wants), a long list of others--but Cunningham's economy and diamond-hard precision astonishes on every page, free of fluff, shorn of any trace of excess, laserlike and true. Yes, he carefully observes and captures his women, but, you must forgive me for observing, with a left-handed, mathematical elegance that is unmistakably male. All this, and a killer punch line to boot. Yes, heartbreaking. Yes, in the end, staggering. Genius? You judge. Devour this in a sitting, buy copies for friends. (I had originally wanted to dock Cunningham a star for his utter ransacking of Woolf--for plot material, character names and situations, everything but mise en scene. Alas, I could not: unlike his cut and polished prose, I am insufficiently hard.)
Rating:
Summary: modern literature at its best
Review: wow! an amazing piece of writing that moves the reader from the outset. cunningham establishes these female characters so completely that you forget that it was in fact written by a man. what insight!
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