The Hours: Summary and book reviews of The Hours by Michael Cunningham, plus links to an excerpt from The Hours and a biography of Michael Cunningham.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, who is recognized as "one of our very best writers" (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times), draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters who are struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The novel opens with an evocation of Woolf's last days before her suicide in 1941, and moves to the stories of two modern American women who are trying to make rewarding lives for themselves in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family. Clarissa Vaughan is a book editor who lives in present-day Greenwich Village; when we meet her, she is buying flowers to display at a party for her friend Richard, an ailing poet who has just won a major literary prize. Laura Brown is a housewife in postwar California who is bringing up her only son and looking for her true life outside of her stifling marriage. With rare ease and assurance, Cunningham makes the two women's lives converge with Virginia Woolf's in an unexpected and heartbreaking way during the party for Richard. As the novel jump-cuts through the twentieth century, every line resonates with Cunningham's clear, strong, surprisingly lyrical contemporary voice. Passionate, profound and deeply moving, The Hours is Michael Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date. Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

Media Reviews

The Washington Post Book World - Jameson Currier [Cunningham] has deftly created something original, a trio of richly interwoven tales that alternate with one another chapter by chapter, each of them entering the thoughts of a character as she moves through the small details of a day.... Cunningham's emulation of such a revered writer as Woolf is courageous, and this is his most mature and masterful work.   The New York Times Book Review - Michael Wood ...the overall impression is that of a delicate, triumphant glance, an acknowledgment of Woolf that takes her into Cunningham's own territory, a place of late-century danger but also of treasurable hours.   USA Today - Ann Pritchard Michael Cunningham's The Hours is that rare combination a smashing literary tour de force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and literature in different ways, check to see if you have a pulse...   The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review [Cunningham] has fashioned a fictional instrument of intricacy and remarkable beauty. It is a kaleidoscope whose four shining and utterly unlike pieces--the lives of two fictional characters, of a real writer, and her novel--combine, separate and tumble in continually shifting and startlingly suggestive patterns.   Publishers Weekly This book more than fulfills the promise of Cunningham's 1990 debut, A Home at the End of the World

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by H_Jade
Beautiful read
The Hours is one of those books that leaves phrases resounding in your mind long after you have put it down. The poetic prose isn't quite Virginia Woolf's, but Cunningham does a wonderful job of adapting the stream-of-consiousness style and making...   Read More

Rated of 5 by sneha
a true criticism
A book written with the only an aim of becoming famous. He is not bothered to tell the readers the story in an easier but understandable way. He has no knowledge of the past,present and future of the characters. An utter mixing of meaningless...   Read More

Rated of 5 by veronica walsh don
Hour and hours
The Hours. Another instance of a man reinterpreting the lives of women from the outside. It is easy to take the work of such a great writer as Virginia Woolf and by extrapolating make a vehicle, in this case a novel, which seems to speak for the...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Valerie
Still thinking?
I will have to rate this book as average. I wonder if it is a fair review since I have not read Mrs.Dalloway by Virgina Woolf. It was a hard book to get into. I struggled through it some in the beginning, but I believe in finishing a book from...   Read More

Rated of 5 by quetzalcoatl
utter fools
This book is one of the most beautifully written books of the 20th century. It is a masterpiece. Those who call it "boring" or whatever denigrating terms they choose to use are, to be blunt and simple, abject fools. Ignore them. Read this...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Anonymous
Awful, awful, awful. Michael Cunningham took three perfectly good stories and ruined them. Let Virginia Woolf write like Virginia Woolf. Not michael Cunningham. This book could have easily been a short story. Not since Charles Dickens was paid by...   Read More

...32 More Reader Reviews

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Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
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• 20th Century (multiple decades)