Michael Cunningham (1)

"The Hours" interweaves the lives of three women, connected across time by Virginia Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway" and is an exploration of themes such as mental illness and the search for meaning in life.

The novel opens with a detailed account of Virginia Woolf's final moments before her suicide in 1941. Cunningham paints a vivid picture of Woolf's internal struggle, capturing the essence of her depression and the profound inevitability that leads her to fill her pockets with stones and walk into the River Ouse.

The book then shifts to the lives of two other women: Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife in Los Angeles, and Clarissa Vaughan, a modern-day editor living in New York City. Laura is struggling with the suffocating monotony of domestic life, feeling trapped in to being the perfect wife and mother. Her story is of unfulfilled desires and the silent despair that can accompany a seemingly perfect life. Laura loves to read and is reading Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway".

Clarissa Vaughan, on the other hand, is living in the late 20th century and is planning a party for her friend Richard, a poet suffering from AIDS. Her life parallels that of Woolf's Clarissa Dalloway and Cunningham draws a comparison between the two women, highlighting their struggles with identity and love.

Cunningham doesn't shy away from the often debilitating nature of depression. Overall, "The Hours" is a moving and thought-provoking novel in which Cunningham delves into the various manifestations of mental health struggles and the impact they have on their relationships with others, offering a compassionate view of a topic that is often stigmatized. Whilst I can admire the author's writing skill the story as a whole failed to really grab me meaning that I found it OK rather than engrossing.… (more)

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.… (more)