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Loading... The Hoursby Michael Cunningham
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Sometimes I wish books came with reading prerequisites listed on the cover. There are very few novels with which one can assume the average person will be familiar. In The Hours, I suspect it would have been rather helpful to have first read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Or be, you know, at all familiar with Woolf in the first place. Not that a quick skim of the Wikipedia plot summary wasn't enough for me to understand the story, but I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it were I able to pick up on the subtle references to Woolf's characters. All in all, I wasn't too impressed with this one. It wasn't bad; it just didn't really pull me in at all. I didn't care much about the characters, the depressing bits felt meaningless, and the introspection was nothing I hadn't heard before. I suspect I might enjoy a Cunningham novel not based on another book. I'm just not sure I'll ever get around to picking one up. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |  A very introspective novel that wasn't quite what I was in the mood for. Lots of detail and slow moving. The three women's lives were contrasting and didn't necessarily link easily together. Dramatic ending took me by surprise. (  ) Tifi | Oct 14, 2009 | 'The Hours'--Brilliant. Michael Cunningham weaves a novel about three women whose lives span the 20th century. Their lives are oven into each others through the book 'Mrs. Dalloway'. Cunningham not only portrays his characters images, but he involves the reader in their thinking and emotions in such a way that one is drawn into their lives. This is serious literary art of the highest quality. The choice of words to depict scenes, emotions, memories and hours divulges an effort of labor and excellence that comes along rarely. The use of metaphore is exquisite. "The woman's head quickly withdraws, the door to the railer closes again, but she leaves behind her an unmistakable sense of watchful remonstrance, as if an angel had briefly touched the surface of the world with one sandaled foot, asked if there was any trouble and, being told all was well, had resumed her place in the ether with skeptical gravity, having reminded the children of earth that they are just barely trusted to manage their own business, and that further carelessness will not go unremarked." (  ) george1295 | Oct 8, 2009 | This is the ultimate homage one writer can give to another. It is the story of three women united across time and space by one powerful novel: Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. The characters, who are all profoundly touched in some way by the novel, are rendered in such exquisite, loving detail that the reader’s life in turn becomes entwined with theirs. Woolf herself is one of the main characters, just beginning to write Mrs. D while dealing with the repercussions of what today would probably be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. Mrs. Brown is reading the novel in post-World War II Los Angeles, a where where she feels completely out of place, unfulfilled and trapped. And in the present day, “Mrs. Dalloway”—as she is nicknamed by her oldest friend—bustles through the day preparing for a party she is giving in her dying friend’s honor (another author). Following the same structure as Mrs. D, the novel spans only one pivotal day in the life of each woman, a day that seems like a microcosm of their entire lives. And as their stories unfold, we gradually learn that all three women are more closely linked than it seemed at first—indeed, their lives are inextricable entwined with one another’s. (  ) sturlington | Jun 21, 2009 | Well... meant as a parody of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, I cannot say I was strongly impressed: newer people, newer problems - populating the same old story. An actualization of the tale - using end-of-the-century people, with different problems and thoughts; well realized though - a great script for a bestselling movie. All the couples used are gay in this book - as opposed to the original one; that changes a lot on the main character, to me. In terms of a parody - unquestionably a good one. Kinda strange - to imagine one of Virginia Woolf's stories, with people wearing blue-jeans ! (  ) Myhi | Jun 12, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0312305060, Paperback)The Hours is both an 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 gray 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 AIDS. 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 realize: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 beveling 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 realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
