Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't Take Wing
Review: The Hours is a beautifully written homage, but in the end it does only make you crave the real thing. Virginia Woolf uses the technique to soar into her character's subconscious, the Hours doesn't fly except as an homage to her genius.
Rating: 
Summary: Not award-winning stuff
Review: When I heard about Cunningham's tribute to "Mrs. Dalloway", I looked forward to it with enthusiasm. However, I was greatly disappointed. While it is obvious that the author has done his research on Woolf herself (the various sections of the book which are written from Woolf's perspective are marvelous), the other alternating story lines and their characters are flat and uninteresting. Some readers said they enjoyed recognizing parts of the original novel. I didn't. I felt as though Cunningham was trying too hard to be politically correct in updating the classic, and the result is a very forced replica of the original characters and of Woolf's style. The ending is an abrupt attempt to tie loose ends together and further spoils the entire reading experience.I suppose it is unfair to compare "The Hours" to the original; however, Cunningham is the one who has invited us to do so. The only positive result of this is that Woolf fans will appreciate her work even more after a failed attempt to recreate it. I can appreciate Cunningham's obvious love for and respect of Woolf; but while his idea for the novel is indeed original, the execution is not. "The Hours" is far from deserving of the vast amounts of praise and awards it has received. It is a shame that the judges were so taken with a work that is an inferior reflection of someone else's genius. I hope that the notoriety of the Pulitzer Prize will not deceive people into thinking that The Hours is a substitute for "Mrs. Dalloway" or for Virginia Woolf. It is not even a worthy companion.
Rating: 
Summary: Life-Changing Homage for a Woolf Worshipper
Review: Journal Entry, 2:30 AM, Jan. 3: What a lark! What a plunge! What a wonderful, delightful week, end to a year, a holiday, a millennium! And capped off with such a divine book, a sparkling diamond--The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. This (dare I say perfect?) book takes on all of the complexity of human interaction to come to the essence of Virginia Woolf's writing (I can't say it better than Cunningham or Woolf do, but for the purposes of posterity, let me record it): we die--by accident, suicide, disease, or the passage of time, and on the way there we are faced with seemingly insurmountable sorrow, regret, and the imprisonment of everyday life. Yet most of us choose to live through the next hour, even if it is agonizing, with the vague certainty that at any moment we could encounter a feeling of ephemeral, ineffable joy. We also have the liberating power to choose, to decide, to make an educated guess as to whether there will be any more hours of joy, and if not, to end our own lives. This book, as far as I have read, is the best attempt to analyze Woolf and her writing concisely and comprehensively, in the context of her life--it is at once great literary criticism and a work of incandescent art. Cunningham stands on the shoulders of the person who I believe is the greatest literary giant of all time. Miraculously, and, perhaps more clearly and concisely than the giant herself and her umpteen biographers, successfully sorts out the difficult layers and issues in her writing (at various times, one feels sure her main purpose is to write about the creative process, at others, the nature of gender and sex, patriarchy, biography, politics, economics, celebrity, or philosophy), making them newly relevent in the present age. Cunningham's Mrs. Brown asks herself, how...could someone who was able to write...like that...come to kill herself? He addresses the theme of despair in Woolf's books and life, which is often over-emphasized by critics. Cunningham reminds us that although Woolf took her own life, the ultimate purpose of her art was a celebration of life, love, and happiness in the midst of a heavy, chaotic, and massive world. Cunningham, as if working and communicating with Woolf directly, helps us to see as we enter the new century that headache, sorrow, regret, and their very stark contrast to joy, are essential to human life--that without the depths of despair, we have no joy, we have nothing. And with all joy and happiness and no sorrow, we become numb to the simple good fortune of being alive. What more appropriate homage could be paid to Virginia Woolf, who changed the world in subtle and profound ways? I am so grateful to Cunningham for reviving Woolf so vividly, almost as though he earned the Pulitzer Prize for her. If only she could see that a man has done it! I believe that his purpose in writing this book was to share Woolf with the world again, to remind us that her insight into the human soul, and life's mysteries, are life-changing, and that by distilling her essential wisdom clearly and reverently, he created a small, beautiful, accessible package. I and others who are so moved can pass this on to as many people as possible, as an open door to the often overwhelming and dense but transcendent Virginia Woolf. I am thrilled. No book has ever moved me to get up at 2:30 a.m. to write a review. This book makes me want to celebrate Woolf's ability to articulate emotions that I and possibly millions of ordinary people feel in a given day; the emergence of a new author whose every new book I can now await with anticipation; the knowledge that I am not the only person in the world to call Woolf the most influential thinker in my life; and finally, the simple joy in my day-to-day existence. The most wonderful aspect of the book is that it stands on the shoulder of a giant so successfully, tearing down my initial skepticism within minutes, reverberating finally with liberating revelation for the ordinary and extraordinary people of our day. I will give this book on every gift-giving occasion this year!
Rating:
Summary: Nice book, nothing else
Review: I liked and I disliked this book for the same reasons: I found this book well written, intellectual, a little too snobbish, a little too "built up" to make a perfect construction. In this book the characters and the situations that would have had the potentialities to be described in vivid colors (a strong red, a shining yellow, a bright green) are described in pale pink, nice fuchsia or cute violet. The final impression is of a nice book , nothing else.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing
Review: This is easily the best book I have read in a long long time. It is astonishingly beautiful. When I finished reading, I couldn't get up, I was so stunned by the quiet beauty, the gorgoeus writing, by the way his story crept inside me so deeply that I feel changed by the experience of reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating work of Art
Review: I came to read this book completly by chance and I was captivated from the very first page until the end. So much joy in this quiet masterpice! It made me plunge into the previous books by Mr. Cunningham (Flesh & Blood; A Home at the End of the World) and I was rewarded with the confirmation of an impressive writer of great empathy, insight and talent. Beautiful book of drifting lives which reminds us about the importance of love and understanding. Thank you Michael.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Pleasure
Review: This book is so wonderful that you will want to read it again and again because you will want to focus on the use of each and every word. I don't really care how many books you have read this one takes your breath away. It is literature in the purest sense. It makes you want to read Mrs. Dolloway and this book at the same time. Mr. Cunningham visited my Literary Society a month or so ago.An author with a real brain that is willing to share his talent with the rest of us. Arn't we lucky!
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Beautiful
Review: The Hours is a beautifully written book by Michael Cunningham, delicately told in a woven tale of three, about compassion, passion and love between some very different people. So moving and well written that after finishing this book, I had to re read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Wolfe and several books about her life. To an avid reader this book was a unique reading experience. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing...A work of literature
Review: Cunningham's The Hours is a true classic of modern American fiction. I cannot recommend it enough to those that are tired of run-of-the-mill American novels that are published annually.
Rating:
Summary: Lives of Quiet Desparation
Review: Cunningham's pastiche of Woolf is wonderfully written and I enjoyed re-reading many pieces. Yet the vision it presents of those who lead a literary life is one of fretful anxiety. We are told that the contemporary Clarissa is happy, but we never feel this happiness. We do, however, feel everybody's fretfulness and unhappiness. There are two suicides in the book (Woolf and a dying contemporary poet); a third will occur in "Mrs. Dalloway" when Virginia Woolf finishes it; and a fourth (by a woman who is reading "Mrs Dalloway" is attempted off-stage. This is an attentuated view of life: Those who read & write are full of despair. Life is a burden. This may not be the message the author intended, but I can't escape the implication that parents should steer our children out of books and into football. Many of the reviewers seem to find in the book an affirmation of life because the survivors soldier on. Given its high suicide rate, this seems grasping at straws. To me, the author does not come to terms with the more basic question of why the suicides were unable themselves to soldier on. I suspect this is because he became too taken up with pastiching Woolf.
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