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

Following the film, I wanted to discover this story that moved me deeply in cinema.
Many books deal with women and their lives, with varying fortunes. Here we are at the top of the basket.
This author can create a universe that takes the reader to the lives and hearts of these extraordinary women in such an ordinary world.
The style is delicate and profound. There is no easy writing.
The author wishes to propose an ample, in-depth, intelligent text that allows the reader to immerse himself in multiple universes without being destabilized by a lower quality according to the periods.
The author carefully portrays the different periods at the heart of the plot.
Few broad, sincere, and intelligent novels give readers the impression of having advanced their perception of human characters.
While this novel requires a particular reader's involvement, contrary to what adolescents think, literature must be adult to be alive.
In short, it must discover a novel of very high quality here.

She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

Three women, three lives. Virginia Woolf writes. Laura Brown reads. And Clarissa Vaughan buys flowers for a party.

The architecture of The Hours holds up the essence of life itself—the suffering, the sacred. Each hour bears weight. And time tethers all; the woman writing a book inspires the woman reading.

Literature is irrevocably transformative. But some transformations are unsurvivable.

First, a personal qualm. I find it a bit distasteful to piggyback on the popularity of an original work. Like oh, you know what would be great? Pride and Prejudice WITH ZOMBIES! It’s funny, but come on! There’s no need for a book for that. That’s what AO3 is for. Significant monetary gain off of someone else’s work and life doesn’t feel quite right. Under Mrs Dalloway on AO3 are 4 entries. Where are their fucking Pulitzers?

Anyway. The book starts with Virginia Woolf’s suicide. Here’s the bizarre and voyeuristic description of a real person's suicide, try not to feel uncomfortable, Michael Cunningham will distract you with his beautiful writing (I'm serious, the writing in this segment is lovely). Now that you’re hooked, we’ll follow Mrs Dalloway going about her day in – wait for it – NEW YORK! Because it’s not really Mrs Dalloway, it’s a modern version of her, vapid and one-dimensional. Then we go back to Virginia Woolf who’s alive again, the suicide part was of course a bait that had to be put in the beginning because apparently it’s the most interesting part of her life, and she’s thinking of ideas for her new novel, Mrs Dalloway, initially titled The Hours. Then we jump in time to a woman reading Mrs Dalloway, baking an ugly cake, and thinking of suicide.

Michael Cunningham parades us back and forth between these three storylines and it’s all so mundane and fogettable that you want to ditch this drivel and dust off your copy of Mrs Dalloway. The only thing this book has going for it is its relation to a famous writer. It has no discernible merit on its own. Even the melancholic, calming writing gets on your nerves very quickly and screams third-rate imitation.

Virginia Woolf said she builds interconnected caves behind her characters? Michael Cunningham builds walls. Everyone’s flat as a fucking pancake.

And the absolute worst part is that even when you look at it as an homage to Virginia Woolf, you have to squint really hard to see it. Cunningham concentrates on her suicide, not on her genius. He’s judgemental. His voice is louder than his characters’. And he is OBSESSED with age.

Passages like this abound:

“She’s grown craggy and worn. She’s begun to look as if she’s carved from very porous, gray-white marble. She is still regal, still exquisitely formed, still possessed of her formidable lunar radiance, but she is suddenly no longer beautiful.”

Did Leonard think all this about his wife? Can’t women in their forties (she is only 41 here!) be beautiful?

It's almost impossible to believe, but here you have Michael Cunningham creating women who think that small breasts don’t make you desirable, women who feel embarrassed for being slightly older than their husbands, young girls who aren’t beautiful because they are overweight, women who cannot be attractive because of their age.

Imagine this man making all these commentaries in a book based on an author who created characters like Mrs Ramsay (physically charming, who "felt herself very beautiful", an older mother with young children) and Mrs Dalloway (“She was not old yet. She had just broken into her fifty-second year.”). Virginia Woolf loves and understands her characters, Michael Cunningham is separated from them by an enormous gap of superficiality.

I knew right from the start that I will not love this book, but I wasn’t prepared to spend every page in a state of irritation. Although I have enjoyed Michael Cunningham in the past, The Hours is a poor effort of an undeservingly celebrated epigone.

I've actually never read any Virginia Woolf. I remember I tried to one time when I was like 15 but I gave up after two pages for some reason. I feel like I should try again after reading this book though. I really enjoyed it. I loved the writing and I loved the pacing and I love the vibe and tone and themes. This is just the kind of book that happens to appeal to me the most and I'm really glad I picked it up.

Considering this is a novel which begins with a suicide and continues to develop the theme this is an incredibly uplifting novel, a lyrical celebration of life in the moment. It begins with the last half an hour of Virginia Woolf's life and she, engaged in the writing of Mrs Dalloway, will be the subject of one of the novel's three narratives, each of which cover a single day in the characters' lives. There's Clarissa who mirrors Mrs Dalloway in Woolf's book and shares her name, who is organising a party for her friend, a poet who is dying of AIDS and Mrs Brown, a suburban housewife in the 1950s who can't find herself in the role of mother and wife. What makes the novel such a delicious read is the beauty of the writing and the host of thrilling insights it provides.

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.'

One of those rare perfect novels, if you can stomach how depressing it is. Bonus: Meryl Streep is also in the book.

Pulitzer Prize winner: An exquisite tale, told in a 'stream of consciousness' style of a day in the lives of three amazing women connected by a Virginal Woolf novel. The tale covers symbiotic relationships, homosexuality, mortality, suicide, mental illness, AIDS…. It is an exquisite piece of work. I. Kid. You. Not! 8 out of 12. Now I don't feel so bad for not liking James Joyce's Ulysses - this is how to rock stream of consciousness, in my opinion.

2010 read

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Genre:
Historical Fiction + Literary Fiction

Synopsis:
The Hours is the story of three women at different time frames. Laura Brown living in the 1950s with her husband and son begins to feel the constraints of her perfect family and home. Virginia Woolf is writing her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. And Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her friend. By the end, all these stories will be intertwined.

Book Structure:
The book is 226 pages. Every chapter is about one of the three characters. The story is told from a third person's perspective. This edition has a stunning cover!


“What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. And there it is... It was death. I chose life.”

My Thoughts:
This book is thought-provoking! so beautifully written and shall remain with you for a long time. The movie adaptation starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore is one of my all-time favorites. I have watched it a long time ago and this time I needed to pick up and read the book first before rewatching it. There are some minor differences as I can recall but the difference I clearly remember between the two forms of media is that in the movie Clarissa is the one who breaks down when Louis visits her (I still can recall how brilliant was Streep in that scene) while in the book it is Louis who suffers from a breakdown.

Before reading this book I highly recommend you read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (Another great novel). Reading Mrs. Dalloway should make you understand the beauty of this novel and appreciate the many references to it in this novel. Mrs. Dalloway is what connects these three ladies. One is writing her (Virginia Woolf), another one is reading that day in her life (Laura Brown) and the third one is living Mrs. Dalloway's life (Clarissa Vaughan). This book has many characters, they are all well written and developed. Usually, when there are many characters in a book it becomes difficult to appreciate them all or like them all, but here I loved all the characters. I related to their insecurities, hopes, and despairs.


“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.”

Michael Cunningham created three passionate yet sad worlds for the readers. Three worlds lived through the eyes of three women with all the emotions of love, grief, and longing mixed together and combined into such a deeply moving and profound story of life and death. No wonder his poetic writing style won the hearts of many readers, lots of praise, and many awards including the prestigious Pulitzer Prize.

The Hours, named using the original title of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, feels like a biography of pain and depression. We all have hours of grief, depression, and sorrow but it is up to us if we want those hours to continue or stop them altogether in one way or another. This masterpiece gets five shining stars from me. Highly recommended ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐


“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.”

4.25/5

Myślę, że zanim cokolwiek o niej powiem, musi poleżeć chwilę w mojej głowie

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.