Product Description

Exiled to Richmond in the 1920s, taken from her beloved Bloomsbury and lovingly watched over by her husband Leonard, Virginia Woolf struggles to tame her rebellious mind and make a start on her new novel. In the brooding heat of 1940s Los Angeles, a young wife and mother yearns to escape the claustrophobia of suburban domesticity and read her precious copy of Mrs Dalloway. And in New York City in the 1990s, Clarissa Dickenson steps out of her smart Greenwich Village apartment and goes shopping for flowers for the party she is giving in honour of her life-long friend Richard, an award-winning poet whose mind and body are being ravaged by AIDS.

These are the characters in Michael Cunningham's exquisite and deeply moving new novel, which takes Woolf's life and work as the inspiration for a meditation on artistic endeavour, failure, love and madness. Moving effortlessly across the decades and between England and America, Cunningham's elegant, haunting prose explores the pain and trauma of creativity and the immutable relationship between writer and reader.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7732 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Hours is both a homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One grey suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs.Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of an AIDS-related illness. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to. Clarissa is to eventually realise:

There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined ... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern bevelling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair.

Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realise, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried

Hermione Lee
"Extremely moving, original and memorable."

Irish Times
"A major achievement from a writer who has earned every work of priase yet directed at him. Not only is The Hours a mahor achievement for Cunningham, it is important for fiction."

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece
"The Hours" is a masterpiece which is particularly surprising and welcome in that it was written in the last years of the 20th century.
It is original, thought-provoking and so deeply felt and beautifully-written that it can be read over and over again.
Anyone who appreciates fine writing and who regards reading as a complete experience, must read this book. Indeed, owes it to himself to read this book. It is magical, unputdownable, haunting.

Rather depressing
I tried really, really hard to get into this. I did finish it but it was nearly always a chore rather than a pleasure. I was surprised and disappointed, as 1) the film was excellent 2) it's a clever, twisted three strand plot 3) I love the writing of Virginia Woolf and the author here appears to be striving to write in her style.

I just found far too much waiting with bated breath for the significance of life to strike...for the "moment" to reveal itself.

The tedium of the lives of the characters makes the reading tedious.

But in between, there are some wonderful passages: "There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children...knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult".

A final, probably petty point. He acknowledges twenty people who helped inspire, revise, edit etc the book. Good grief.

A beautiful, unpretenious read
I waited a few years after seeing the film to open the book as so often memories of the big screen can cloud the original work. Coming to this novel with a fresh eye was a great expereince. The writing is beautiful and the characters surprisingly deep despite only being painted in broad strokes. Those wanting high action will be disappointed but anyone who looks for atmosphere and poetry will love it. The Woolf influences are clear in the writing style but this is a tribute rather than a cheap imitation. An easy read on one level but also so much more