The Hours

Rating:
Summary: Depressing but very well written
Review: This is a very depressing story. I knew it was going to be when I started it, but I kept going because Michael Cunningham's prose had me hooked. He is an amazingly gifted writer, and he has created a very unique and gloomy story here.
I was a bit confused with the chapters going back and forth between the three women's stories at first. After awhile I started to get to know each character and see the way he'd written it to all come out together as one.
Instead of going into detail about each, I will simply say this. These are lives that are not happy, they all seem to be walking zombie-like through life and not really living it. It is very dreary.
Even though this is going to have the sensitive emotional wrecks like me out there bawling, You will get an eyeful of beautiful writing as well.

Rating:
Summary: A 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5-A serious, intelligent read
Review: "The Hours," a tribute to Virginia Woolf's novel 'Mrs. Dalloway,' depicts one day in the life of three different women from three different eras. Virginia Woolf is the first woman from the 1920's; the second is a post World War II housewife in LA; the third is a woman nicknamed "Clarissa," (Mrs. Dalloway's first name), a modern day New Yorker who lives with her female lover.
I respected this book and the author's efforts to pull these three disparate stories together. The author manages to portray accurately so many of the darker shades of the emotional palette: grief, despair, anguish, suicidal longings, and so on. A plot twist near the end knitted together two of the stories.
I would recommend reading "Mrs. Dalloway" first to increase your understanding of this book. Small yet telling nuances leave you thinking throughout the night. For example, in Mrs. Dalloway, the heroine is a prosperous London housewife preparing for a party who looks back on a brief kiss with a woman in her youth; in "The Hours," the modern day Clarissa is a lesbian hostess preparing for a party who looks back longingly on a heterosexual relationship from her youth. However, you can appreciate this book without reading Woolf first.
I would recommend this book to those individuals who gravitate towards serious, thoughtful contemporary literature. English Lit junkies-particularly Woolf fans-should also try it. (Even if Woolf followers don't like the book, they still can discuss it.)
I would not recommend this book to individuals who needs some levity in their reading. This book does not leave you "feeling good" but it does make you think a lot.

Rating:
Summary: Calculated
Review: Combine Homosexuality, AIDS, suicide, three women, and what have you got. A sure bet for a bestseller, and a definite movie. The prose of the book is ornate, but the book itself is not solid enough. You feel too much like it is crafted, rather than an expression of a writers soul(Kafka, Hemingway, ....) It has the clear markings of a writing workshop book rather than a work of art. And that is the test for me. Will this book be read like War and Peace thirty years from now. No.

What is interesting is to do a search for the fiction books that have won the Pulitzer over the years. How many have you never heard of, and how many authors do you not recognize. Micheal is going to join that list.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Average
Review: I had never read a Pulitzer winning book before I picked up The Hours, and - I tell ya - I've read better. Much better.

The story was well written enough. I liked the links between the three women; Virginia Woolf writing her classic Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway) getting ready for her party and Laura Brown - reading the novel in the fifties. I liked how Cunningham mirrored Virgina's thought processes in constructing Mrs. Dalloway, with what was happening in Clarissa's day.

Technically - I can't find fault with the book. It is just that it lacks.. that certain something. The x-factor. The bit that kept me from holing myself up in my bedroom frantically turning pages, biting my nails to see what happened next. It just wasn't there. It lacked engagement.

Maybe the movie is better, who knows?

Rating:
Summary: Introspection
Review: In The Hours,we see the life of three women in one day. The novel emphasizes greatly on the insecurities of the three women, their joys and their lives. The novel has a good basis from Virgnia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Rating:
Summary: dont get fooled
Review: The Hours is another example of artistes taking subjects of great gravity (depression, memory,life, lost love) and then falling short of expectations when it comes to delivering on these themes with truth. Sure, The Hours is a beautifully "written" book. Cunningham's language is flawless though it does get a little too ornate and poetic at times. I love lyrical prose and dense, vivid images but the quality of the same in The Hours suffered from what i can call vacant, heartless gossamer syndrome. The entire book with its themes and its supposedly deft execution is cleverly calculated to "win" over critics. One can easily get deluded into believing that the book's premise ( cutting across time and space to reveal the bare bones of womanhood and its attendant suffering and small joys)guarantees a read that will be richly illuminating. In your first read you will come away from this book feeling a little uncertain of its "charms". I was not sure how to react. It seemed "great" and for a while, i bought into all the hype and literally convinced myself that this indeed was a contemporary classic. But the doubts that lingered in the back of my head crystallised as soon as i started the second read.
This is a very pretentious book. It is heavily contrived and crafted with the kind of magnificence and precision that is, to put it mildly, subtly ostentatious. You wont really know that you are being clevery and very grandly, being fooled. Its basically like the teenager's archetypal story of depression that is smartly veiled with ambiguous remarks, obscure imagery and some intelligent italicised passages.
I dont know how the rest of you feel but there is something intrinsically "not ok" with this work. it just does not ring true and i think thats simply because it is too forced. I feel bad writing this bcos i had high expectations from this book and was waiting to lap it up with eagerness and delight. But i cant possible endorse something like this, its not what it seems.

Like i said, a subtle but unmistakable air of literary contrivance hangs densely in every page. Dont get fooled by this. If you want depth, beauty and intelligence tempered with grace and shimmering prose, read Michael Ondaatje or Milan Kundera. Now thats the real thing. The Hours is a hyena masquerading in the skin of a lion.

Rating:
Summary: Captivated by "The Hours"
Review: I found "the hours" to be an intricate and captivating story of three women and just everyday life. I found that cunningham did a wonderful job of writing women from a males perspective. It's amazing how each of the women have a small yet present echo in each others lives. As you read you see many parallels between their stories. You begin to see the strength and yet a resounding weakness that each women pocess. Cunningham is able to have three completely different lives but one soul between the women. I found that this book is great for anyone to read and being only 16 I had no struggle with the book only understanding.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: This book is the perfect mixture of excellent use of language and an original and thought provoking idea. It uses Virginia woolf's Mrs. Dalloway to create an intriguing post-modern novel which brought both laughter and tears to my eyes. I was astounded at some of the language used, it struck me with its beauty. The ideas raised in the novel were also unbelievable, giving new meaning to enjoying the beauty of life.

Rating:
Summary: Kryptonite
Review: Why do I hate this book so much? Well, let's see...it opens with a dramatic reconstruction of Virginia Woolf's suicide. That struck me as rather tasteless.

If this was the only problem with the book I might have reserved judgment. However, Cunningham continues the "good work" begun in his earlier novels of portraying women as flobby wandering half-souls whose emotions occasionally crop up, as warts or an ingrown hairs might, to further confuse them in their blind stumblings through the world.

Silly women, always getting in the way. I'm probably not going to get very many "helpful" votes for this review but I strongly, strongly suggest that you read MRS. DALLOWAY, the novel that Cunningham's work is ostensibly based on, and never even consider picking up THE HOURS.

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't finish it....
Review: Well, so much for the Pulitzer! I haven't read one this bad in a long time.