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The Hours
 
 
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The Hours (Paperback)

by Michael Cunningham (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Popular Classics) by Virginia Woolf

The Hours + Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Popular Classics)
Price For Both: £8.24

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Product details

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Fourth Estate; New Ed edition (7 Oct 1999)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841150355
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841150352
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.9 x 1.7 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 12,338 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Cunningham, Michael

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Hours is both a homage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One grey suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs.Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of an AIDS-related illness. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to. Clarissa is to eventually realise:
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 ... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence: "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern bevelling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair.

Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realise, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried

Hermione Lee
"Extremely moving, original and memorable."

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Hours
84% buy the item featured on this page:
The Hours 4.1 out of 5 stars (27)
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11% buy
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£3.98
Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Popular Classics)
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Mrs Dalloway (Penguin Popular Classics) 3.9 out of 5 stars (18)
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A Home at the End of the World (Essential Penguin)
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Customer Reviews

27 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (5)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Please read this book (again!), 21 Dec 2000
By A Customer
I felt compelled to write a review of this book since two of the previous reviewers only gave it two stars. Don't believe it!!

This is a truly inspiring and deeply thought-provoking book, based on a profound appreciation of Woolf's novel. It is written with marvellous economy and scholarship, tightly structured around a single day in the lives of three women. The meeting of two of the characters in the final chapter is the least important of the linkages between the three strands and after all that has gone before seems partly irrelevant.

The themes of 'Mrs Dalloway' which the book picks up and develops are among the most simple and entrancing - love, loss, consciousness, how and why we go on living. And I'm sure there's plenty that I missed.

I'm looking forward to re-reading this book and I do encourage those readers who didn't appreciate it first time round to do the same. This powerful little book may not reveal all it's depths to you without a little work but that should do nothing to diminish your enjoyment of it.

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Simply brilliant., 17 April 2000
By A Customer
I am compelled to write an impromptu review, seeing that the only other reviewer saw fit to allow a paltry 2 stars to this elegant gem of a book. I first read The Hours over a year ago, after reading several glowing newspaper and magazine reviews. I was not disappointed. This little novel has really stuck in my mind-- I'm sure I will read it again and again in my lifetime.

The great accomplishment of this novel is the way that Cunningham has absolutely captured Virginia Woolf-- her life, her spirit, and her writing style. Had I not known otherwise, I would never have believed that this was written by a man. Her wit, the off-center brilliance of her observations, her malaise and isolation, are all perfectly captured here. But the GENIUS of the story is the way in which her life, and most especially her death, are not made to seem sad, but beautiful and poetic in a way that touches us all. He shows this by linking Woolf in unexpected ways to the lives of two very different women living in different eras. Great literature is transcendant in ways that we rarely appreciate in our day-to-day lives; Cunningham has shown that there can be great poetry and meaning even in shopping, baking, and death.

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars seventeen and impressed, 29 Sep 2003
By ollie (Renfrewshire, Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Hours (Paperback)
I was getting sick of harry potter, I couldn’t handle the hype anymore, so for my next book I wanted a more mature angle to it with no broomsticks in sight!
I needed a book for a school project, a book with enough detail and inspiration to have a basis for an essay. I looked no further than ‘the hours’.
At first I was a bit unsure if it was the right choice but once I started reading I just refused to put it down. This book was by far one of the most inspirational, moving and emotional that I have ever read.
As I read many of the reviews I can see many adults reviewing their best parts of ‘the hours’ and practically writing a whole essay in doing so. But for a book that would blow away a seventeen year old boy, leave him questioning life, leave him out of breath, leave him with a tear on his cheek has to get more than a patronizing “Well done” it deserves more so much more.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars I wish it were longer..
This is such a good book,my only criticism is that it was so short I read it in a matter of hours (pun not intended). Read more
Published 5 months ago by Lulushka8

2.0 out of 5 stars Self-conscious twaddle.
I read this book having watched the film, not something I usually like to do, and can I say what a load of self-conscious, pretentious piffle. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Seldom Seen.

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece
"The Hours" is a masterpiece which is particularly surprising and welcome in that it was written in the last years of the 20th century. Read more
Published 7 months ago by H. Carlton

3.0 out of 5 stars Rather depressing
I tried really, really hard to get into this. I did finish it but it was nearly always a chore rather than a pleasure. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Four Violets

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, unpretenious read
I waited a few years after seeing the film to open the book as so often memories of the big screen can cloud the original work. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Hayles

5.0 out of 5 stars 5*: a complete modern masterpiece
This book is not merely a piece of entertainment, which I think the lower-rating readers are expecting. Read more
Published on 25 Jun 2006 by Ms. J. Francis

3.0 out of 5 stars Eloquent, but empty
Having recently read a lot of character-based novels (e.g. ‘Morvern Callar,’ ‘The Wasp Factory’ and ‘Less Than Zero’)…I have to confess... Read more
Published on 10 Nov 2005 by J

5.0 out of 5 stars Dealing with "The Hours"
So many people before me have already spelled out the plot of "The Hours" and so I felt that I simply needed to add that this potent, emotionally evincing novel is indeed worthy... Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2004 by Ross

4.0 out of 5 stars Great writer, great twist, great book
Drawn to this by the furore surrounding the film adaptation (which, for the record, I have yet to see) I wasn’t sure what to expect. Read more
Published on 3 Oct 2003 by stevenperryman

5.0 out of 5 stars A Kaleidoscopic Tale
This is the perfect book for lovers of Contemporary fiction.
A very deep and moving book with complex characters and situations, all of which the reader will be able to relate... Read more
Published on 8 Jul 2003 by Heather Marshall Negahdar

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