Rating: 
Summary: An indelible and important novel.
Review: THE HOURS is an incredibly powerful novel showing a talented writer at the top of his form. It is evocative, sensual and striking in its examination of the interior world of its characters. Like a love letter to a woman underwater, the novel captures the essence of Woolf without exploitation or redundance. A lovely, lovely read.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book before it is reviewed to death!
Review: I'm sure this book has flaws, but I didn't find them. Beautiful, interesting, insightful . . . but above all, clever. You will put in on the sparsely populated shelf of books you want to re-read. The lives of three women (one of whom is a fictionalized Virginia Woolf) are explored through a one-day window, like Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham's writing is enviable in its ability to paint the picture. For example, "Walter has a talent, remarkable in its way, for looking utterly attentive and entirely blank, like a lizard that has crawled onto a sunny rock." Instantly we can visualize Walter and empathize with the character who is lunhcing with him. While a familiarity with Mrs. Dalloway would surely enhance your reading of The Hours, it's not a pre-requisite. You may find yourself looking it up later, however. The book is brilliant and a wonderful study in character. The less you know about how to think about it, the more you will enjoy it. So don't wait for all the reviews to be written before diving in; find some time to curl up with The Hours.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read all year
Review: I rented the film Mrs. Dalloway -with Vanessa Redgrave- before starting this book because it had been so many years since I've read the Virginia Woolf novel (the film is great, by the way.) This is a beautifully written book with three interesting story lines. It's hard to imagine a man writing so well about the inner lives of women, but the author surprised me again and again with his insightfulness. A sad book, in many ways, about lives not lived as they might have been, but a true book. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: flexous
Review: Michael Cunningham has, in his triumphant career, mined the underworld of the soul. He is a prophet, a writer who has avoided the dim void of contemporary letters in favor of a Polymorphous Cornucopia of Emotive Phosphorescence. He is also buff.
Rating:
Summary: Regardless, you should read "The Hours"
Review: Unlike the previous reviewer, I am not a big fan of "Mrs. Dalloway" -- but that may be because I read it AFTER reading "The Hours." Following Mr. Cunningham's shimmering prose, Ms. Wolff's seemed excessively dense. Nevertheless, "The Hours" is a brilliant "reworking" of the classic, but one that stands on its own as one of the best books of recent years. Ever since I read "A Home at the End of the World," Michael Cunningham has been one of my favorite authors. (And as a result of reading that book, his others, and essays he has written, I have developed a massive crush on him :-)-- hopefully he'll do a reading/signing in DC.) I was thrilled to find "The Hours" on the shelf at a local bookstore. I picked it up immediately and couldn't put it down -- it is gorgeously written, highly engaging, and intensely moving. A particular testament to Mr. Cunningham's talent is that, even though the "surprise" at the end is really no surprise, his ability to create characters and situations you really care about keeps you eagerly anticipating the resolution of his story -- but not as eagerly as I anticipate his next book; I just hope I don't have to wait as long as I had to for this one!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Pretentious City
Review: Simply put, this may be the most pretentious novel of the year. It's supposed to be some sort of Virginia Woolf pastiche, but she was an accomplished and original stylist. This is simply someone trying to flaunt his prodigious verbiage. If you like Woolf, read Mrs. Dalloway or The Waves instead..
Rating:
Summary: If you liked Mrs. Dalloway, you'll probably like *The Hours*
Review: Michael Cunningham's fantastic novel is a slender sequel-of-sorts to Virginia Woolf's *Mrs. Dalloway.* A writer must have exceptional talent to pull off a conceit like this, but Cunningham does it with aplomb. The novel genuinely reads as if it were written by Mrs. Woolf, cleverly applying many Woolfish techniques and rearranging many of the details from the 1925 novel, whose earlier versions Woolf referred to as *The Hours.* The narrative covers a single day in the life of Virginia Woolf as she is composing her novel, a single day in the life of Laura Brown, a post-war California housewife who is reading *Mrs. Dalloway,* and a single day in the life of a contemporary New Yorker named Clarissa Vaughan. Like Mrs. Dalloway, our new Clarissa remembers a long-ago kiss while buying flowers for a party she is hosting for a friend. Cunningham's poetic story is astonishingly perceptive, presenting details of personal interaction, thought, and inanimation, that are unusual yet recognizable. My only warning to readers is that they should read *Mrs. Dalloway* first, and *Mrs. Dalloway* isn't for all tastes. I, however, think *Mrs. Dalloway* is a masterpiece, and as improbable as this may sound, I believe *The Hours* is also a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: The Hours is an amazing piece of work. Some reviewer down below stated that this was bold but not original because it was a copy of Woolf. I think, if anything, this book is original. It is a tribute to Woolf's genius, yes, but the story itself is all Cunningham's. The writing style, the themes, the portrayal of characters, while being similar to those in Woolf's works, are very much Cunningham's own.
This book is really something-- I strongly recommend it to anyone who's got a few hours on his hands. :)
Rating: 
Summary: bold, but lacks originality
Review: Cunningham is pretty bold to write a book about women even though he isn't one, so I had to check it out. But frankly, the hours is pretty much a second version of his all-time favorite writer, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. the hours is pretty much Mrs. Dalloway two. His writing is beautiful but it's all pretty much a shadow of Mrs. Dalloway, I read Mrs. Dalloway first before I read the Hours and I saw tons of similarity, alot of of it seem to be taken out directly out of Mrs. Dalloway. For example the whole gay people thing, that's because Mrs. Dalloway's heroin has that element of gayness, so Cunningham just had to put it in there. But unlike Virginia Woolf, who wrote Mrs. Dalloway clearly to represent herself, Cunningham wrote the hours which makes him seem like a woman expert, but really, does he really know what is going on in our minds just because he did extend research on Virgina Woolf and her book?? Another thing, the theme of the hours apparenly is the reflect life with death, each of the hero/heroine killed him/herself so that the people around him/her would value life more and go live their lives instead of caring for him/her. But couldn't it go the other way around too? Cunningham really failed to make each suicide seem heroic. each of the woman all seemed to be the same person, and have pretty much the same problems, they are somewhat gay, mental issues, live for the people around them etc, if Cunningham make each woman entirely different yet still connects them, I would then say: " hats off to you". And also, I do have to agree that does Cunningham have to write about the minds of women who have issues??? Why couldn't he write about normal woman, that would've been more original, although I highly doubt he can. Can a man really know what a woman thinks? this pretty much proves that Cunningham lacks originality and wholly wrote the hours to honor Virginia Woolf.
Rating:
Summary: moods of the women
Review: I thought this movie was unbelievable. This movie/book is about Bipolar or Manic Depressive Illness. I wonder why nobody is bringing this up.
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