Rating: 
Summary: Hours well-spent...
Review: Michael Cunningham's beautifully crafted work has left me connected yet far away; fulfilled, but still yearning...for what, I'm not quite sure. Perhaps for more literature like this. To create an homage to an icon like Woolf is no mean task. The author echos not only the themes of Mrs. Dalloway, but the nuanced style as well. In doing so, he manages to find a completely original voice. I long for more of Cunningham, but in the meantime, I'm off to go re-read Mrs. Dalloway!
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: I read The Hours just after finishing Mrs. Dalloway, and I was drawn in. Every sentence is perfect, and there are sub-themes and symbols running through the book that kept me thinking. The book itself was based loosely on Mrs. Dalloway, but it stands on its own as a book about the terrible fears of inadequacy we all face, and the importance of small moments and dear memories in our lives.
Rating: 
Summary: Read better, Read worse
Review: This book was ok, if you like this sort of thing. But why read ABOUT Virginia Woolf when you can READ Virginia Woolf? Michael Cunningham is like the Puff Daddy of the literary world, simply by borrowing an idea from a literary genius and twisting it into his own tale. Skip it. Read Mrs. Dalloway.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I picked up this book on an impulse. The back mentioned Virginia Woolf and it was a Pulitzer Prize winner, so I gave it a shot. It is a book you don't want to put down, but it's better that you do because each time you put it down you will ponder the stories and the women and try to connect their lives. I've read so many stories of "suffering" women, but these 3 women seemed so real, like they could be your friend and have challenges real people are facing.
Rating: 
Summary: The difference a day makes
Review: In "The Hours," Pulitzer prize winning author Michael Cunningham, sews together a seemingly disconnected menagerie of three separate lives into a magnificently woven and thoughtfully created patchwork. Within the duration of 24 hours, our author guides us through the actions, thoughts, hopes and fears of three women including (most ambitiously) Virginia Woolfe as she spins out her timeless masterpiece, Mrs. Dalloway. While Cunningham seamlessly weaves his stories together, the destination is much less impressive that the journey itself. As the hours pass, we travel through a day in the lives these individuals have chosen. In fact, choice, is perhaps the most conspicuous theme that lurks ominously behind the daily machinations of Cunningham's characters. Laura, a post-war housewife, battles her conflicted domestic situation on an almost incessant basis as she futiley attempts, with her objectified little boy, to bake the birthday cake of all cakes -- a task which she is innately incapable of and ultimately disempassioned about achieving. Similarly, Clarissa, a successful contemporary publisher, spends her hours toiling over the details of a tributary party being thrown for her dearest friend, a dying poet who will never attend. Finally, our historical heroine, Woolfe, will spend her morning birthing words for her novel which she exhaustively regards like a new mother upon a distorted newborn. Like Sisyphus on the hill, all three women are imprisoned by the details of their chosen lives, both loathing and addicted to them at all times. Cunningham successully captures the chaotic thoughts of his characters in a very real and human manner. He quite masterfully takes us through the rapid impulses of feeling a person experiences on an hourly if not, momentary basis. The contrast between what one does versus what one feels, predominates the landscape of these characters' day as does the ever unrequited longing for what "might have been." In the end, we come away a realism that is both sobering and full of promise that there may only be the pure cherish of a city, the morning and the hope for anything more.
Rating:
Summary: The Hours
Review: This is a beautiful and subtle work--concentrated in a single day, the author follows the lives of 3 women whose stories are subtly intertwined until the very end--when with a bang they come together. The portrait of Mrs Brown is at once the most ordinary and the most compelling--a picture of desperation below a very ordinary surface-- a very ordinary life that has ramifications beyond anything one would expect. Extraordinary!
Rating:
Summary: A gifted writer
Review: It saddens me to see that people have described this book as being about "lesbians and suicide," since the scope of this book is so much more. Cunninham has managed to take three distinctly different women and blend them together seemlessly. This is not a plot driven book so if you're looking for something that grabs you and keeps you turning pages so you find out what happens next, pass on this. If you're looking for a beautifully crafted story that deal more with deep emotion, love, loss and alienation then this book will speak volumes to you. I found this book haunting, sad and beautiful at the same time. Cunningham's gift with words and phrasing is brilliant. The book hasn't been critically praised because it's ground-breaking, it is because of it's depth and it's flow. Read this, you wont' be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Deserving of the Pulitzer
Review: Michael Cunningham brings back the true classic novel form in 'The Hours'. I picked it up because it was about Virginia Woolf, one of our century's greatest women writers, and found that Cunningham truly deserved his Pulitzer. Virginia's story is heartfelt, expressing the ache she must have gone through days before her suicide. Clarissa, whom is compared to Virginia by her best friend dying of AIDS, shows similar characteristics, as she watches him die so painfully, knowing there's nothing to stop it. And Laura (?)(Clarissa's best friend's mother?) tells her story just as well, the emotions of her pregnancy and marriage, and how she feels as she's reading 'Mrs. Dalloway'. This is a truly remarkable novel that should be used in high school English, along with Woolf's masterpieces. If you want to delve into a woman's mind, here is your chance.
Rating:
Summary: Take your time...savor the prose
Review: Maybe the readers who don't like this book were in a hurry...this book requires, almost demands, to be read slowly, deliberately, and not in one sitting. I've not found a book in recent time that held my attention and drew me into the story more than this one. I read it after hearing a piece on NPR...and I've passed my copy on to friends who have also enjoyed the wonderfully crafted prose. Although there are three separate stories going at one time, I never felt disjointed or disrupted during the shifts. I've even re-read the book three times and will read it again...it's that good. If you can get beyond some of the negative reviews, and if you can give yourself time to absorb the Cunningham's glorious prose, you just might find a gem of a story just waiting to be unearthed. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: A book of moments
Review: I'm baffled that people don't like this book. I found it a subtle and touching read, filled with moments of being in true Virginia Woolf style.
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