He is not one of those egoists who miniaturize others. The way the storylines progress and tie together is mesmerizing. Dalloway” while suffering from alienation and self-doubt about her life and her husband and son. Dalloway and the most harrowing (for me) of the three: Laura Brown, a housewife in LA in 1949, who reads “Mrs. The novel opens with a devastating prologue detailing Virginia Woolf’s suicidal step into a river, then alternates its three storylines: a single day with Virginia at home in the company of her husband with her sister Vanessa visiting New Yorker Clarissa planning a party for her dying friend Richard, a minor poet and novelist who years ago during a brief love affair dubbed Clarissa Mrs.

But the line between pretension and brilliance is thin, and Cunningham lands clearly in the land of brilliance with the hours. Dalloway” could have been a pretentious dud. This risky novel of three parallel stories linked thematically by the Woolf’s “Mrs. As with the other novels that have remained dear to me, it’s the writing-the mesmerizing voice, the impeccable language, the virtuoso style-that delivers. Not only does The Hours still belong in my top 25, it likely belongs in the top ten. “The Hours” made my list of the The Most Important Novels in My Life, from which I’ve been re-reading during the time of COVID-19. Years later, along came Michael Cunningham’s “The Hours,” which I first read when it came out in 1997 (later saw the quality film adaptation). I found her style to be dense and inscrutable.

Dalloway,” and “A Room of One’s Own”-I never fully embraced her.

Forgive me.īut even after I did read Woolf-I vaguely remember “To the Lighthouse,” “Mrs.

Michael cunningham the hours