Literary Award Winners Fiction Book Club discussion

Please discuss here The Hours from Chapter 12 through to the end.

At the end of The Hours I was left thinking about the ways Virginia, Laura and Clarissa struggle with the passing of time, the cultural constraints of gender, and, especially for Virginia and Laura, their fascination with the idea of death. I think the prose is consistently beautiful and I'm more than impressed with Cunningham's ability to weave these themes throughout the novel.

I was surprised (and pleased) to learn that the title, The Hours, was also the working title for Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Other than that obvious connection to Cunningham's source material, what does it bring to this novel?

I felt the novel showed 'the hours' of different lives ticking away, the characters only having a limited time to experience life and reflect on their feelings. Spending a few hours reading was portrayed as an inexplicable desire to spend time alone. The theme of people depending on each other was contrasted against their desire for independence. Towards the end we see Richard taking control over his remaining hours.

This was pleasant to read -- thanks for selecting it. I saw the movie when it came out and read Mrs. Dalloway around the same time (so, years ago now), but hadn't read The Hours. There's a great deal of Mrs. Dalloway in The Hours (lines from the text and structure and mood). I think one of Cunningham's great achievements here was in bringing out the implicit interior of loneliness in Woolf's writing and embodying it in Laura's character, and the explicit marveling at life in a single morning of Mrs. Dalloway and embodying it in Clarissa's character, and then bringing the two together in Richard's story. It's a pretty neat trick, literary-wise.

I think I need to read Mrs. Dalloway again while The Hours is still fresh for me. And I agree that the way Cunningham handles time and riffs on Virginia Woolf's novel is masterful - And Katie's observation that "Spending a few hours reading was portrayed as an inexplicable desire to spend time alone" was so obvious to me after she pointed it out but I hadn't thought about that before. The Hours is so layered. Absolutely one of my favorites.