I was up to 2:00 am last night finishing "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham
and I concur with Adam. I loved it. It was deep and complicated, yet very
readable. I would highly recommend it.
Terri Catalano
MLIS Student
University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU]On Behalf Of NHS Webmaster
Sent: Monday, December 30, 2002 5:09 PM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: ADULT/SEC->BOOK REVIEW->THE HOURS
It must be my season for movie tie-ins. First I read “Catch Me If You
Can” and now I’ve finished “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham (among
others!). Where “Catch Me” was light and fluff, “Hours” was deep,
complicated, and to me, melancholic.
The story revolves around three women and three time periods. First is a
fictionalized Virginia Woolf in 1923 writing a novel that will be called
“Mrs. Dalloway.” Second is Mrs. Laura Brown, a housewife and unsure
mother living in California just after World War II., who is reading
“Mrs. Dalloway.” Third is Clarissa Vaughan, a book editor living in
modern-day Greenwich Village, whose poet and life-long friend Richard,
who long ago gave her the nickname "Mrs. Dalloway," is dying of AIDS.
I have not read “Mrs. Dalloway” and perhaps I should, as from what I
have since learned was considered by some to be the first and finest of
modernist day-in-the-life novels. “The Hours” is also set in one
day-in-the-life of each of the characters.
I loved how the author tied each of the characters together, even
interspersing objects—roses, for example, in each of the scenes. Death,
too, weaves together in all three of the lives. And family, and how
members of families interact and relate to one another.
Here is a wonderful excerpt from the book: “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 Hours” won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1999.
This is an outstanding read!
Adam Janowski
Library Media Specialist
Naples High School
1100 Golden Eagle Circle
Naples, FL 34102
E-mail: NHSWebmaster@collier.k12.fl.us
Phone: 239-430-6644 Ext. 390
Fax: 239-430-6673
Library web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/lmc/
School web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/
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