The Hours
Ratings83
Average rating4
15
Ratings83
Average rating4
A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.
The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Richard, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.
Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.
Reviews with the most likes.
Every sentence in the book is eloquent, and the prose is so enchanting that it made me take my time going through the story just to saviour its beauty.
I saw this as a wonderful look
at our human difficulty in
living a life that is at once
both everyday and exceptional.
An incredible book that held up
very well to a second reading.
Probably at least the fifth time I've read this since the fall of 2002 — still as beautiful as ever. One passage in particular leaps out at me and, in truth, always has, but given the last 10 months has new resonance:
“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.”
frankly it's a little scary how well michael cunningham is able to portray a woman's suffering
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