Reli este livro na iniciativa qu promovo no instragram #lerLGBTI. Será a minha terceira leitura desde a primeira experiência na primavera de 2000.
Como afirmo tanta vezes este livro é um dos livros da minha vida. Entre ambiente, personagens, temática e narrativa este livro faz de mim uma outra pessoa. Sempre que pego nele o meu diário vais se enchendo de estranhas ideias.

"As Horas" de Michael Cunningham é um livro fascinante que explora a vida de três mulheres em diferentes épocas e como os movimentos sociais do passado influenciaram seus destinos. O livro é um estudo cuidadoso de personagens complexas e das diferentes maneiras pelas quais elas experimentam o amor, a mortalidade e a identidade.

O livro é dividido em três seções, cada uma das quais segue uma das mulheres centrais - Virginia Woolf, Laura Brown e Clarissa Vaughan - enquanto elas enfrentam questões existenciais e lutam para encontrar um sentido em suas vidas. O estilo de escrita de Cunningham é envolvente, fazendo com que o leitor se ligue intensa e profundamente com cada personagem e suas histórias.

Para mim uma das maiores forças do livro é a forma como Cunningham incorpora elementos da vida de Virgínia Woolf em sua ficção, dando ao leitor um vislumbre da mente complexa da autora. Além disso, o livro retrata a luta de Woolf com a depressão e a loucura de uma maneira honesta e sensível.

No geral, "As Horas" é um livro magnífico e único que merece ser lido por qualquer um de nós, alguém que aprecie personagens bem desenvolvidos, uma prosa habilidosa e uma trama envolvente.

Unforgivably cringeworthy!

I have read and liked Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. I enjoyed being inside Clarissa’s head in that one ordinary day. I saw what she saw, I felt what she felt and heard the Big Ben chiming and announcing each hour through her ears.

This book read like an apologia for being a woman. It is more a parody than “Draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf”.
Imagine copying a Picasso, adding a couple of cubes and lines here and there and calling it your own. It may be yours, but no matter what you do, your work has lost its originality.

The author’s imitating Mrs. Dalloway and Woolf’s style of writing was disastrously in vain. What was the purpose of the book? What was the point? That women spend way too much time philosophizing about every single item they observe in daily life?
You know who does that? People who have everything- family, money, job, house, in short, a good life and are bored to death of their every day richness. People like the women portrayed in this book.
In a word, the author has taken the concept of ‘Stream of Consciousness’ to a whole new level. Everything is analyzed to death.

“She runs down the stairs and is aware (she will be ashamed of this later) of herself as a woman running down a set of stairs, uninjured, still alive.”

What does that even mean? Why ashamed? If it was a man would he have been ashamed? What is there to be ashamed of anyway? Is it because of being a woman and running down the stairs? Is it because of being an uninjured woman? Is it because of being a woman who is still alive? Or is it the ‘being a woman’ which is a disgrace??

There is a whole chapter about a child blowing candles. The thoughts that are produced by the mother’s brain while her 3 year old child is in the process of blowing a candle is absurd to say the least. In fact most of the thoughts thought are absurd.

All in a Day

I am the last person I know to have read The Hours. I admit I delayed for mostly wrong reasons, put off by the success of the popular movie, and then by hearing that is was a reworking of one of my favorite books, n  Mrs Dallowayn by Virginia Woolf. I still haven't seen the movie, but within the first few chapters of the book, I realized that this was far from being a mere spin-off. Michael Cunningham seems virtually to channel Virginia Woolf, not only capturing her style and sensibility, but revisiting her deepest concerns to show their relevance to the setting and mores of our own day.

I cannot imagine how it would be to come to The Hours without having read Mrs Dalloway first. The distinctive structure of that book—an hour-by-hour account of a single day in the life of a woman as she prepares to give a party in the evening—is copied in each of the three interleaved stories that make up Cunningham's novel: Virginia Woolf herself, living near London in 1923, beginning work on Mrs Dalloway; Laura Brown, a young wife and mother in 1949 Los Angeles, preparing for her husband's birthday dinner, reading the Woolf novel, and beginning to question her life; and Clarissa Vaughan, in New York City at the end of the century, preparing for a party in honor of an old friend who once nicknamed her "Mrs. Dalloway." The three stories move forward together, hour by hour, paralleling the progress of the book, and linked to one another by a series of references (such as the yellow roses that crop up in all three stories) that give a little lift of recognition each time they occur. But there is nothing systematic about this; the action seems natural, not preordained. When Virginia thinks about the novel, for example, she at first plans something rather different from the book she finally wrote; we see her ideas for the book changing over the course of the day, in response to her emotional reactions to its small events. So when even the model is fluid, the stories that are patterned after it can be fluid too.

And then there is the style. When writing about Virginia or Laura, Cunningham uses a straightforward modern style, but he writes of Clarissa uncannily like Woolf might have done, had she been living in New York in the nineteen-nineties. For example, as she sets out: "The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Clarissa pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths." A little overwrought, perhaps? But read on: "New York in its racket and stern brown decrepitude, its bottomless decline, always produces a few summer mornings like this." That is New York all right, not a translated Bloomsbury. It is quite amazing how beautifully Cunningham balances the reflective mental imagery that is the hallmark of Woolf's style with a practical sense of urban life as it is lived today, with its share of street people, oddballs, AIDS, and four-letter words.

Yet structure and style alone do not make a novel; Cunningham uses his three stories (which ultimately interconnect, though in a slightly artificial way) to develop themes that are also central in Woolf's own work. Most obviously, there is the role of women. All three, at some point in the day, question what they are doing, and attempt small escapes that may be harbingers of something larger. This is clearest in the story of Laura Brown, who apparently lives the American dream, so her growing unease raises questions by coming from left field. Virginia's end by suicide is prefigured in a prologue, and Clarissa, by contrast, seems already to have made her break for independence, living openly as a lesbian and having a child by a donor. Woolf touched lightly on gay themes in Mrs Dalloway and elsewhere, but Cunningham develops these a lot more explicitly, enabling him to examine many more shades of the sexual spectrum than his model, but always honestly and often with a touch to stop the heart.

But the quality that Cunningham captures best, I think, is the very essence of Mrs Dalloway: the sense of looking back at the past from middle age. The third Clarissa chapter (pages 89–98 in the paperback) is a perfect distillation of the bittersweet scent of past loss intruding on present contentment. Perhaps if I put together a few sentences from the end of that chapter, I can have Michael Cunningham say it better than I can:

She could, she thinks, have entered another world. She could have had a life as pleasant and dangerous as literature itself. Or then again maybe not, Clarissa tells herself. Venture too far for love, and you renounce citizenship in the country you've made for yourself. You end up just sailing from port to port. Still, there is this sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that.

And then the very last lines of the chapter:

There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: that was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

But Clarissa, nonetheless, is content.

the prose was genuinely stunning but i struggled connecting with how the stories intertwined. and i didn't care much for clarissa's storyline. laura tho... sheesh. her reflections on suburban living had me cringing and empathizing in a big way.

I think it takes courage to write about great literary figures and fictionalise bits of their lives, even when their lives have been well documented as is the case with Virginia Woolf. It also takes courage to interconnect the story and the characters with one of their most beloved masterpieces as Cunningham did.

This story revolves around three women, in three different eras of the twentieth century, all in some way affected by the book Mrs Dalloway . Virginia Woolf has began to write the book and is shaping Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa has been named Mrs. D by her friends and her life does resemble Mrs Dalloway's in its domesticity and what-could-have-beens, and Laura Brown is a suburban mom who reads the book and is captivated by and relishes in the vitality and complexities of Mrs Dalloway's life.

The women are upper middle class and married (or at least partnered as gay marriage wasn't recognised in the United States or anywhere else in that case at the end of the 20th century) but all feel a mixed sense of failure towards their lives and relationships. Virginia Woolf struggles with mental health and managing her art and household, a middle-aged Clarissa occupies a nostalgic realm where she longs for a more erratic and more passionate life and Laura Brown struggles to maintain the picture of a happy wife and mother.

It is the interconnectedness of the book, in its centrality that is most fascinating but also brittle. It is amazing that Cunningham was able to hold it somehow together through the different periods and exploring the inner lives of the different women.

Great book, but a tiny bit of disappointment, here, but only a really tiny bit, and that's just because I first saw the movie and that also is really good. The idea of Cunningham to pay tribute to Virginia Woolf by working in three time periods and with three split characters (including Woolf herself) is simply brilliant, because with it the special complexity of the person Virginia Woolf really comes into its own. It took me a little bit longer (compared to the movie) to get into the story, but certainly the last third of the book contains fragments of great subtlety and delicacy.

According to me, the very characteristic of Woolf is that hypersensitivity, that 7th sense she had, and that perhaps was also fatal for her, and this book really brings this in full daylight. I can not add much, unless maybe the following quote, on one of the last pages, that also gives an explanation for the title of the book: “Yes, Clarissa thinks, it’s time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. 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 (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.”
Rating 3.5 stars.

4.5/5 stars! Such a clever book.

7.0/10

I'm having a difficult time rating this book because I loved the movie far too much. The movie had just the right amount of nuance and subtlety and inspiration, writ large, that acts as a revelation to the mind and heart. The book: not so much.

For most of the novel, I felt like I was standing inside a huge echo chamber attendant with visual aspects that kept flashing at me, à la Clockwork Orange. Virginia Woolf was more than writ large -- she was the godhead from which everything flowed. After a while, it became annoying, and in degrees, downright disturbing. Does this man not have a thought of his own that does not flow from Virginia Woolf?

As the intent was to pay homage to Woolf, it occurred to me that this adoration had become its own curse: the real sentiment of what he is trying to say gets lost, often, in the Voice of The Creator. Since she did it so much better than he, I began to wonder what was the point of the entire exercise. Oh, how Virginia would have hated this, I thought, she who hated mirrors.

On the other hand, if the intent of this novel was to bring new readers to Woolf, Cunningham has done his job well. That echo chamber that I find so disturbing is also a useful tool for whispering into the ear of neophytes, "Pssst, woolf, woolf, woolves ..." I like that so many have turned to Woolf because of this novel and found her, for the first time, accessible, and even likable.

Cunningham is a good enough writer that it is an easy read; on a few occasions, he is positively inspired. On the whole however, I wasn't so taken with his style that I would seek him out again. I think he's a good enough writer that had a brilliant notion of what would sell, and what people were hungry for at the time of his writing this. How can you ever go wrong when Virginia Woolf is your source?

Please excuse me while I drag my aching body up off the sofa, in a rather desperate attempt to find the words even remotely grand enough to describe how exquisite this book is, and exactly how it has left me feeling. I will mention that it was good enough for me to personally escort it to my mother's house within an hour of finishing it, and, I had an overwhelming urge to order another Cunningham book from Amazon within the hour, too. And yes, I fulfilled that urge.

This novel begins with a rather dark, unsettling tone, as we read about Virginia Woolf putting rocks in her coat pockets and then we watch her as she walks into a river to end her life. I was certainly not expecting it, and it definitely made me sit up straight. Although I know a fair amount of the mental health issues Woolf endured, but none of us really know just what she was feeling that day, on March 28th 1941, when she took her own life.



The way Cunningham entwined Virginia Woolf's story with two other people suffering with mental health issues in later periods of life was nothing short of masterful. I was mesmerized with Cunningham's prose, and the way he wrote about mental health. There was a certain level of beauty involved with it. That, I'm sure of.

'We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. 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 (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.'

The three world's that the different women live in are definitely unhappy and desperate ones to experience, but then there are moments of light, love and passion, which I could appreciate, even when death is ultimately at the end of it all.

Cunningham's writing style within these pages is poetic, and isn't like anything I've encountered before. It tore through me potentially uninvited, and honestly, when it ended, my mind was reeling for more. I wasn't ready for it to be over.

I have never watched the film adaptation of this book, and to be honest, I'm not in any rush to. I want this feeling to last as long as possible.

This to me is an important book, and shows us inside the minds of three individuals and the sorrows they face. We all encounter sorrow at some stage of our lives, and we all deal with that sorrow differently. I suppose my only regret, if you could call it that, is that I've read this at a difficult time for me. I think to make the most out this beautiful book, the heart really needs to be intact, first.

'But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.'

I very much so enjoyed this. I’m not sure how to explain what appealed to me. Didn’t realize I was stumbling into a story about a bunch of said lesbians (kinda?) and now I wanna go reread mrs Dalloway

Update just watch the movie and realized the connection at the very end holy fuck

three stories complicated i feel like doesn't understand anything blow my mind but still was something beautiful about it

4.5