The Hours by Michael Cunningham
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Book Reviews of The Hours
Book Review: a small, moving story
Summary: 5 Stars
forget for amoment the hype and movies and oscars and so on. at the end we are left with a real beautiful novel. it's not one of those books that has tons of actions and event in them, and it's best points are focusing on the small tiny barely noticable parts of life.a day in a life of 3 woman all in connection to verginia wolf's novel, one's the autor, one a reader and another is sort of a modern vertion of mrs. dalloway, all of them experiencing one day in their life who effects or conclude a lifetime. there's no big special effects here, nothing but emotions, thoughts andreflection of the few people who are the charecters in this book. for me, reading today a story about the simple moment in life was a moving and very intence experience.
the way the smallest things in our life, like flowers, a cake, a dead bird manage to express so vivdly huge consepts as art, medness and death, that, for me, is a great experience, both mentaly and artisticly. at times the reading got so intrnce, so close to my own life and thoughts that i had to stop. and that's just about all i look for in a book.
Book Review: I could not put the book down.....
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in a few hours. I could not put it down -- I felt like Laura Brown - needing to do what is my societal duty, but completely obsessed with Cunningham's book.
To fully appreciate this novel, a person should have read Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway" or at least have a knowledge of that particular book.
Cunningham weaves a seamless story. It is actually refreshing to have one chapter melt into another chapter of another woman in a different era....yet all are bound by duty versus their own desires.
No wonder this unique and beautifully written novel won the Pulitzer Prize.
I do not feel it is a book just for women, nor is it an "estrogen fest" as some narrow minded misogynists have deemed the novel.
Read the novel for what it is and don't permit gender to get in the way of a well written, lavish, and extraordinary book.
Just because the book is primarily about females and deals with homosexuality, suicide, and depression does not mean it is not great literature.
Book Review: A Love Song for Virginia
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know how well this books stands alone--I hadn't read Mrs. Dalloway but in a class I had to see the movie, so I had working knowledge of the plot.That being said, this novel was a beautiful continuation and extension of Mrs. Dalloway and Virginia Woolf's life. For all its mystique as a Pulitzer Prize Winner and its erudite content, this work is not inaccessible and terribly high-minded. The characters are heart-wrenchingly true to life and Cunningham does not take liberty with Woolf's life. Instead, the true love he has for her work shows through; yet, this story is very much his own.
I haven't read a book like this before, where the love of the subject matter shines through so vibrantly, where the prose is natural and takes on a different life for each character, where the hours in a day are treated as though they are more valuable than gold, where a man inhabits a woman's mind without prentension or falsification.
Don't be scared of the subject matter. This novel is a treasure, an amazing examination of how we live our lives.
Book Review: like viewing life underwater
Summary: 5 Stars
I was surprised that I did not tire of the writing style, which is immediate rather than linear. I expected to tire of the characters, each of whom struggles in her own way with being conscious and aware of each hour she lives.I was, instead, fascinated, as though I were watching a kalideoscope composed of each character's experience of each small segment of her daily life. I believe such immediate and ongoing conscious awareness and focus is the stuff of art. In ordinary reality, such perceptions are subconscious most of the time, with our awareness only coming on line occasionally.
Although each of their lives is poignant, I didn't feel sorry for any of the characters; I admired their perception and their courage in responding to the circumstances of their lives.
The ending surprised me (the last chapter). I haven't decided yet if I like the relationships of the characters being literally tied together as they were. It jolted me out of the atmosphere of the rest of the book.
Regardless of the ending, I highly recommend this novel.
Book Review: A fulcrum of a novel
Summary: 5 Stars
THE HOURS, Michael Cunningham's riff on Virginia Woolf's envelope-pushing novel MRS. DALLOWAY, is a pretty stunning piece of work in its own right.Filled with razor-sharp observation and devastating emotional interconnectedness, THE HOURS is a stunning odyssey through a day in the lives of three women, and by extrapolation, every woman and every human being. It would be impossible to read this book and not find little bits and pieces of yourself strewn across its pages.
What's really amazing is that Cunningham is able to stick so close to the themes, structure, and characterization of Woolf's novel, while managing to build, out of seemingly the same pieces, a story all his own.
What THE HOURS does so well is reveal to us the binding emotional ties that unite us all. It makes you see the similarities in ostensibly different lives, different dreams, and different words. Cunningham manages to create a perfectly balanced fulcrum on which a large teeter totter of metaphors is able to swing up and down in powerful arcs.