The Hours by Michael Cunningham is the Pulitzer Prize winning
reinterpretation of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Cunningham
divides Woolf’s plot into three neatly packaged interwoven stories.

The Hours by
Michael Cunningham contains three
interwoven stories set in three very diverse eras and geographic settings. Like
Mrs.
Dalloway, the novels moves through the hours of one day, however, it
moves between the three stories highlighting significant events as each set of
characters travel through their day from dawn to dusk. The first story focuses
upon the real life Virginia Woolf. It is 1941 and set at the Woolf country home
outside of London. Woolf who has suffered from bouts of depression throughout
her life is once more contemplating suicide. The second story focuses in on
Laura Brown, a pregnant wife and mother reading Mrs. Dalloway on the eve of her husband’s birthday. It is 1949 and
set in a postwar housing development outside of Los Angeles. Brown is depressed
about having another child and the prospect of losing even more of herself and
her precious free time for reading to the demands an additional child. Finally,
the third story focuses on Clarissa Vaughan, a 52-year old book editor on the
eve of a party that she is throwing for Richard, a poet friend of hers who is
dying from AIDS. It is 1990 and is set
in New York City. Clarissa Vaughan is an updated version of Clarissa Dalloway
planning a party. Unlike Mrs. Dalloway, Vaughan is a lesbian with a more active
career, but like her namesake her life at times sounds as meaningless and
hollow. During the length of the day, Woolf will commit suicide, Brown will
runaway and contemplate both an abortion and/or suicide, and Vaughan will
blissfully walk through her day while Richard struggles with the ravages of his
disease.

The Hours by
Michael Cunningham and Mrs.
Dalloway by Virginia Woolf exist in an inseparable symbiotic
relationship. In order to appreciate and really understand The Hours one must read Mrs. Dalloway. Mrs. Dalloway, however, does not always appeal to modern
readers’ tastes and pace. In fact, in my review of
the book, I described it as "one of the slowest paced
and boring novels I have ever read."
Unfortunately, it really IS required reading in
order to understand the plot and intricacies of The Hours. It is
absolutely essential for appreciating why it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Michael
Cunningham is a professional author and professor at Columbia University. He was raised in Pasadena, CA. He earned his Bachelors in English
literature from Stanford University and his Masters in Fine Arts from the
University of Iowa. He graduated from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop
and had a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. "His work has appeared in The
Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Vogue,
and Metropolitan Home. His story "White Angel" was chosen
for Best American Short Stories 1989." His novels include Golden States
(1984), A Home at the End of the World (1990), Flesh and Blood (1995), and The Hours (1999). He
has most recently written the non-fictional Land’s End: A Walk through
Provincetown (2002). Cunningham received the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for
Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the American Library Association’s book
award for gay and lesbian literature all for The Hours. He has also received a Guggenheim
Fellowship (1993), a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1988) and a
Michener Fellowship from the University of Iowa (1982). Michael lives in New
York City.

Follow
the success of film version of The Hours and Nicole Kidman’s
Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the popularity of this book
has taken off. I highly recommend that any one serious about appreciating this
award winning novel read (or listen to the audiobook)
of Mrs. Dalloway first. While both
books are slow paced, The Hours won
the Pulitzer Prize and deserves recommendation.

© 2003 Su Terry