Rating: 
Summary: I Should Have Read Virginia Woolf First!
Review: As I have never read any of Woolf's work, please judge the following with this caveat. The best part of this book is the beautiful language. The imagery, the sheerness of the author's words made me think that perhaps Cunningham is also a poet! However, with that said, by the end of the book I was disappointed with his lack of character development. It would not have taken him too long to clue us in to the backgrounds of these people. This is especially true in the case of Laura, whom he depicts as a stereotypical fifties housewife, who is exceedingly bright and curious, but feels somewhat trapped. Except for these facts, we learn practically nothing about her at all. With that said, I would still recommend this book for its gorgeous language, and the fact that it also made me want to run out and read Virginia Woolf!
Rating: 
Summary: It creeps up on you
Review: Here's a book that starts and ends at a very leisurely pace. It's deceptively clever, beautifully executed, and gripping in a quiet way. If you're still thinking about a book a day, or a week, or a month after you've read it, that book has very definitely succeeded. This book made me want to know more about Virginia Woolf (and I thought I'd read everything about her). It also made me care about characters I initially thought were static. But the considerations of life and death are provocative, simply stated and yet very profound. I pay the author the greatest compliment in saying that, at the end, I was entirely caught up in the lives depicted, and I'm still thinking about the book.
Rating:
Summary: Purple Kudos
Review: I have read all 179 reviews. What is this opposition to "purple prose" i.e. something well written, penned beautifully? Down with minimalism and let the language breath! Is it possible that the English language has deteriorated to such an extent we have all ascended to the top of the tower of lexicon lackadaisical lunacy? Those who are so repulsed by Mr. Cunningham's use of ornate language, should be conceptual in their observation and see how tightly he wraps this novel. There is not an ounce of excess to be found. Whether anyone relates to these characters or the overall theme is not the point. We are witnessing the true artist at his very best. The truth -- as I see it -- is that Mr. Cunningham uses contemporary language to its fullest and modern style to the max! I deplore criticism of content for content sake alone. If one wants entertainment, read Barbara Cartland, or anything that Ophra Winfrey person has on her Book-of-the-Whatever club. I hope this book is never made into a movie! I wish Mr. Cunningham all the financial success he deserves, but I would hate to see Follywood destroy another good novel. If Mr. Cunningham continues to write books of this caliber, his next prize will be the Nobel. Hip hip hooray for Mr Cunningham!
Rating:
Summary: A Veritable Treasure Chest
Review: Michael Cunningham's novel, The Hours, is a tribute to Virginia Woolf but it is a treasure chest of rare gems in its own right. The book is the story of one day in the lives of three extraordinarily remarkable women living in three different periods in history. In the first story, Cunningham takes a quasi-fictional look at the last day of Virginia Woolf's life. His description of Woolf's final thoughts as she descends into the deep water of the river are terrifically poignant and moving. Even those who are not fans of Woolf would be hard-pressed to come away from this without tears in their eyes. The second story belongs to Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway," a Bohemian-style book editor living in present-day Greenwich Village. A woman concerned with aging, Clarissa still values individual moments, people, memories. Clarissa is busy with preparations for a party she is hosting for her former lover, an award-winning poet now dying of AIDS, a man modeled after Woolf's Septimus Warren Smith who battled demons of his own. The preparations for the party are more than reminiscent of Woolf's own heroine, Clarissa Dalloway. The third story is set in post-World War II California and concerns itself with the life of Laura Brown. Laura is a housewife living what amounts to an extremely claustrophobic life. She feels closed in, shut out and intellectually impotent with regard to her mundane household chores. Laura Brown desperately needs a "room of her own." She tries to carve out just enough hours in the day to read Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," and she considers Woolf's own suicide a viable option of her own for escaping a life that has become unlivable, not through horror but through simple lack of meaning. Laura's story is, perhaps, the most difficult because it is the one that most parallels Woolf's own life. A brilliant woman, Virginia Woolf had the misfortune to live during a time where woman were seen and slept with but whose opinions were valued little. Cunningham adroitly gives us a look at, what must have been Woolf's own quiet desperation through Laura's eyes as she realizes that, no matter how intelligent is, no matter how much she has to contribute intellectually, no matter how many brilliant and original thoughts she has, ultimately, she will be judged only by the sheen on her kitchen floor and the flakiness of her pie crusts. Although not long, The Hours is a book that demands the reader's undivided attention. It takes time and effort to mine all of its treasures, many of which lie far below the surface. The magic that ties these three disparate stories together is Cunningham's amazing prose. Although there are three stories going on at the same time, none ever feels jarring, interrupted or intrusive. Each jump in time, is, in fact, bittersweet. We hate to leave Clarissa and yet, at the same time, we can't wait to return to Laura. And Cunningham's careful attention to detail definitely shows his familiarity with Woolf. Many passages in the book are so brilliantly written they almost sing. The Hours is a book that dazzles, not with melodrama, but with those individual and ordinary moments that flicker in our memories and then replay themselves again and again, against all odds and expectations.
Rating:
Summary: Not usually my cup of tea, but really good.
Review: I generally like a little more story to my story, and struggle with books that are well written slice of life pieces. This book, however, did it so well that I didn't mind. I did as many of these reviews suggested and read Mrs. Dalloway first and must admit I liked this better. These are three interconnected stories that are woven together effortlessly and adeptly with a central motif of sex and suicide. Cunningham uses language much like Woolf but the stories move faster and more purposively.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing Less Than Brilliant
Review: The Hours is a fantastic work of fiction, a literary imagining of the first order. In a time that has been, for me at least, bereft of good writing, Cunningham stands out as one of the two or three best I've read in years. Add Brauner's Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf and Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies and you've got a reason to return to reading for good. Cunningham's interweaving of three stories, including that of Virginia Woolf herself, is nothing less than brilliant. Top-notch!
Rating: 
Summary: Addictive...but unsatisfying
Review: I couldn't put it down, but when it was done, I didn't feel satisfied, like I'd been accelerated toward an unfulfilling (but very unexpected, interesting) finish...
Rating:
Summary: A Great Book, alternating between the lives of 3 women
Review: This is an A+. Virginia Woolf is a writer living in London in 1923. Laura Brown is a housewife who is married to a war hero, living in Los Angeles in 1949 and is entrhalled with reading all of Virginia Woolfs' books. Clarissa Vaughn is a wealthy independent woman living in Manhattan NYC in 1999 who is nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway (the main character in Virginia Woolfs' bestselling book). Each story leads to a connection that is deeply moving and passionate. The writer is so descriptive. It's no wonder it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. There were so many lines in this book that were of such significance to me in many, many ways. For example: "----is proud of his ability to discern the history of a face; to understand that those who are now old were once young."------- "I swoon over the beauties of the world but am reluctant, simply as a matter of reflex to kiss a friend on the mouth."-------- It is better, really to find the elevator frankly inoperable, and to walk up five flights. It is better to be free.------- One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get on paper.------- It is like the first disinterested sigh a lover sends over the telephone wires, the sigh that signals the earliest beginning of the end.------- Yes, she thinks, this is probably how it must feel to be a ghost. It's a little like reading, isn't it--that same sensation of knowing people, settings, situations, without playing any particular part beyond that of the willing observer.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: This book was suggested to me while talking to someone about Virginia Woolf. The suggestion was that I read "Mrs. Dalloway" prior to reading "The Hours". What I wonderful suggestion. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. Be sure to read or re-read "Mrs. Dalloway". "The Hours" is tied with "Nudist on Late Shift" as my favorite book read this year.
Rating:
Summary: A work of art, Cunningham at his best...
Review: When I sat down to read, THE HOURs, my expectations were so high I figured they would be dashed instantly. They weren't. THE HOURS, a homage to Virgina Woolf, is a brilliant work of art which, along w/ THE POISONWOOD BIBLE, became my favorite book I read all summer. It could be titled as 'a quick read' but you are so facsinated by the material on the pages you want to read it as slow as possible, absorbing every last ounce of it til it is gone. For the people who gave this book a bad review, they probably did not understand what they were reading. I did, and thanks to Michael Cunningham I now understand even more. I hope that you buy this and read it because in every decade there is one writer's homage to another writer that grasps your heart not letting go. This is that novel and with it's strong characters and sensational plotting, you will be craving for more at the last page.
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