The Hours - Michael Cunningham

A normal day in June. Who would think a normal day in June could be a full story. A full book, nonetheless. And the normal day in June not only being the first of many days, but also being the one and only day in the novel. Does a story of one day remind you of another book? Well, it should. It should remind you of Mrs Dalloway written by Virgina Woolf in the 1920's. The book was very controversial at the time, but after her suicide in the 40's, the book grew and grew by the year, and by today it's become one of the best loved books in literature. It's very obvious that Michael Cunningham was a big fan of Virgina Woolf, and really ...  Read the complete review

This book was sent to me as a thankyou for joining online bookstore BookRabbit.com, based on the other books that I had on my "bookshelf" there (mainly poetry). The concept behind The Hours is a single day in the lives of three different women; author Virginia Woolf, New Yorker Clarissa Dalloway, and housewife Laura Brown. Woolf is in the process of writing her novel Mrs Dalloway, Brown is struggling to keep her head up in a suburbia she finds increasingly stifling, and Dalloway is holding a party for her dying poet friend and sometime lover, Richard. The plot is loosely interwoven with that of Mrs. Dalloway itself; as such, having read ...  Read the complete review

I strongly recommend this book because the questions it poses and tries to answer are indeed the crucial questions in life: the meaning of life and death, the impact of other people's lives on ours. Cunningham draws on the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, uses its characters, but only to pass his message that whatever our life might be like, we still cherish those fleeting moments of happiness, and we hope for more." Heaven only knows why we love it so". And, perhaps, the whole wisdom is in fully experiencing those moments of feeling at one with the world around us, in embracing those moments" an hour here or there when our lives ...  Read the complete review

This book is "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham, I chose it as I was reading Virgina Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" at the same time, a book whose origional title was "The Hours" and because I thought that "Mrs Dalloway" was a great piece of literature and I wanted to see how another writer responded to this genius. Needless to say I was very disapointed. It is a sad day for literature when a book this poor wins the Pulitzer prize. This book is 'inspired' by Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway' a classic of the modern canon. It attempts to 'update' the story setting it in the 50's, in the present and ...  Read the complete review