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 Samuel, 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.
Amazon.com Review The Hours is both an 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 gray 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 AIDS. 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 realize:
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 beveling 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 realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried
From Publishers Weekly At first blush, the structural and thematic conceits of this novel--three interwoven novellas in varying degrees connected to Virginia Woolf--seem like the stuff of a graduate student's pipe dream: a great idea in the dorm room that betrays a lack of originality. But as soon as one dips into Cunningham's prologue, in which Woolf's suicide is rendered with a precise yet harrowing matter-of-factness ("She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa."), the reader becomes completely entranced. This book more than fulfills the promise of Cunningham's 1990 debut, A Home at the End of the World, while showing that sweep does not necessarily require the sprawl of his second book, Flesh and Blood. In alternating chapters, the three stories unfold: "Mrs. Woolf," about Virginia's own struggle to find an opening for Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; "Mrs. Brown," about one Laura Brown's efforts to escape, somehow, an airless marriage in California in 1949 while, coincidentally, reading Mrs. Dalloway; and "Mrs. Dalloway," which is set in 1990s Greenwich Village and concerns Clarissa Vaughan's preparations for a party for her gay--and dying--friend, Richard, who has nicknamed her Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham's insightful use of the historical record concerning Woolf in her household outside London in the 1920s is matched by his audacious imagining of her inner lifeand his equally impressive plunges into the lives of Laura and Clarissa. The book would have been altogether absorbing had it been linked only thematically. However, Cunningham cleverly manages to pull the stories even more intimately togther in the closing pages. Along the way, rich and beautifully nuanced scenes follow one upon the other: Virginia, tired and weak, irked by the early arrival of headstrong sister Vanessa, her three children and the dead bird they bury in the backyard; Laura's afternoon escape to an L.A. hotel to read for a few hours; Clarissa's anguished witnessing of her friend's suicidal jump down an airshaft, rendered with unforgettable detail. The overall effect of this book is twofold. First, it makes a reader hunger to know all about Woolf, again; readers may be spooked at times, as Woolf's spirit emerges in unexpected ways, but hers is an abiding presence, more about living than dying. Second, and this is the gargantuan accomplishment of this small book, it makes a reader believe in the possibility and depth of a communality based on great literature, literature that has shown people how to live and what to ask of life. (Nov.) FYI: The Hours was a working title that Woolf for a time gave to Mrs. Dalloway.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

lgrsfic/eng\_mobilism\569505__Collections-Collections__Collection 50 Greatest Gay Books by Various Authors\AfterElton_s 50 Greatest Gay Books (mobi)\35 - The Hours - Michael Cunningham.mobi

zlib/Fiction/American Fiction/Cunningham Michael/The Hours_4671044.mobi

michael cunningham

Farrar, Straus & GirouxHoltzbrinck Publishers [Distributor]

Michael Cunningham Farrar Straus and Giroux

Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

G.K. Hall ; Chivers Press

St. Martin's Press

North Point Press

Hill & Wang

Wadsworth

Macmillan

First edition, New York N.Y. New York N.Y. ©1998, 2002

1st ed., New York, New York State, 1998

Picador modern classics, New York, 2000

United States, United States of America

Thorndike, Me., Bath, England, 1999

New York, New York State, 2000

United States, Unknown, 2002

2002-11-09

PS, 2002

lg_fict_id_1672913

Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-[230]).

subject: Man-woman relationships

contributor: Internet Archive

format: Image/Djvu(.djvu)

rights: The access limited around the compus-network users

unit_name: Internet Archive

topic: Man-woman relationships

Type: 英文图书

Bookmarks:
1. (p1) Prologue
2. (p2) Mrs. Dalloway
3. (p3) Mrs. Woolf
4. (p4) Mrs. Brown
5. (p5) Mrs. Dalloway
6. (p6) Mrs. Woolf
7. (p7) Mrs. Brown
8. (p8) Mrs. Dalloway
9. (p9) Mrs. Woolf
10. (p10) Mrs. Brown
11. (p11) Mrs. Woolf
12. (p12) Mrs. Dalloway
13. (p13) Mrs. Brown
14. (p14) Mrs. Woolf
15. (p15) Mrs. Dalloway
16. (p16) Mrs. Brown
17. (p17) Mrs. Woolf
18. (p18) Mrs. Woolf
19. (p19) Mrs. Dalloway
20. (p20) Mrs. Brown
21. (p21) Mrs. Dalloway
22. (p22) Mrs. Brown
23. (p23) Mrs. Woolf
24. (p24) Mrs. Brown
25. (p25) Mrs. Dalloway
26. (p26) Acknowledgments
27. (p27) A Note on Sources

theme: Man-woman relationships

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters who are struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair. The novel opens with an evocation of Woolf's last days before her suicide in 1941, and moves to the stories of two modern American women who are trying to make rewarding lives for themselves in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.
Clarissa Vaughan is a book editor who lives in present-day Greenwich Village; when we meet her, she is buying flowers to display at a party for her friend Richard, an ailing poet who has just won a major literary prize. Laura Brown is a housewife in postwar California who is bringing up her only son and looking for her true life outside of her stifling marriage.
With rare ease and assurance, Cunningham makes the two women's lives converge with Virginia Woolf's in an unexpected and heart-breaking way during the party for Richard.

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.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David HareThe Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace. The Hours is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

"Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours is the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950's Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb, and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace, demonstrating Michael Cunninghan's deep empathy for his characters as well as the extraordinary resonance of his prose." --On cover

A Trio Of Stories Around The Writer, Virginia Woolf. In The First, Set In 1923, Woolf Is Writing Her Novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The Second Story Is On A Woman Reading The Novel In 1949 Los Angeles, While The Third Is On A Woman In Present-day New York Who Has Been Nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway By Her Boyfriend. Michael Cunningham. Includes Bibliographical References. Winner Of The Pulitzer Prize.

2017-07-01