ISBN: 0312305060
List Price: $13.00
Amazon Price: $10.01
Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy this book
from amazon.com
or from
amazon.co.uk
|
Avg Cusomer Rating: 5
Reviews:
Summary: Prose and Introspection Worthy of the Pulitzer and More
If you ever asked me to read a book about lesbians -- young and old -- homosexual men dying of AIDS, former lovers of the dying AIDS person, hypnotically insane housewives, and depressed suicidal writers, I would say "pass."
This book is about those topics, and amazingly weaves three worlds -- each separated in time and location -- which touch upon Virginia Woolf and her less than happy disposition. Woolf is encased in her home and seeks to return to another place or she will kill herself. Modern poet Richard seeks to do the same -- but for very different reasons.
As each character is introduced to the reader, introspective review of their person is constantly delivered by Cunningham. Amazingly trite and vivid details are delicately positioned throughout this novel to the point where we are ensconced by the incredibly moving prose.
This book is well deserving of the Pulitzer.
This writer does the most amazing thing - he takes on a topic I would have to consider the least attractive for my readings tastes and delivers a book I wish, and probably will, read again.
Summary: Everything a novel should be
This novel was heartbreaking, uplifting, enraging, and empowering. I read Mrs. Dalloway in college and couldn't quite yet grasp what was being said. I read this novel as a desparate housewife of a sort, and wept. I wept for myself, for women through otu the ages. I wept for my dying spirit, and in that realization I was able to find myself again. I suspect many women have had the same reaction. In subsequent readings I've found there are some problems with the plot development, but this novel is so beautiful and so poignant that it doesn't matter.
Summary: Magnificent! But read Mrs. Dalloway first
A stunning book, beautifully written, absolutely marvelous. I'd give it more stars if I could. Cunningham, who has written some stellar books ("A Home at the End of the World" especially), makes this one his masterpiece.
Of crucial importance for this book is reading Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," preferably as soon as possible before reading "The Hours." Cunningham's brilliance here is his homage to Woolf's great book, entwining modern characters and situations into his book, all of which have root-- no matter how subtle-- in the Woolf book. These surprises-- this connections of time, continuity, emotional desperation, the siren's song of death, the search for meaning in the smallest actions-- all of it is rooted in "Mrs. Dalloway." How Cunningham transposes it to "The Hours" is sheer bliss, a one-of-a-kind experience like no other book I've ever read.
I don't know what he reader would take without having read "Mrs. Dalloway" first. I intentionally read the Woolf right before reading the Cunningham, knowing that he wrote "The Hours" as both an homage and a sort of continuity-- not a sequel, or follow-up, but a careful rethinking that leads one great novel into another. I assume the reader would enjoy "The Hours" without having read a lick of Woolf. But don't-- the pleasures of the second derive from its astonishing intimacy with the first.
Granted, Virginia Woolf is no easy read. "Mrs. Dalloway," arguably her finest novel, is an existential, internal character study filled with revelations and epiphanies so subtle, so transcendent, so small (and yet so internally large), the book can be read several times to grasp its complexity. Yet I can't imagine the pleasure I got out of "The Hours" without having read Woolf first.
This is truly Cunningham's finest piece of work to date, and frankly, one of the best modern novels I've read. This is a must for Woolf fans, of course. And Cunningham (obviously influenced by Woolf) firmly establishes himself as of the top authors in the modern literary canon. An absolute gem.
Summary:
|
,
amazon.co.uk
,
google.com
