The Hours (2004)

By Michael Cunningham
The book upon which the recent movie of the same name was based is pretty good. You would hope so, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize AND the Pen/Faulkner Award when it was published in 1999.

The novel describes the interlinking lives of Virginia Woolf, who wrote (amongst others) the novel “Mrs Dalloway”, Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who is reading Mrs Dalloway, and present-day Clarissa, who is called Mrs Dalloway by her friend Richard (a poet dying of AIDS). All three are trying to deal with physical and mental illness – for Woolf and Brown it is their own, for Clarissa it is Richard’s. The author’s portrayal of mental illness (or at least, deep unhappiness) was particularly effective, in describing the small, everyday successes and failures which can change a person’s mood so drastically and make death seem alternately attractive and inconceivable.

I liked this book a lot, although I found the present-tense style a bit annoying (e.g. “Clarissa opens the door and looks outside” etc). Maybe that’s what you have to do to win Pulitzers these days. Anyway, a good holiday read, if you happen to be going on one soon.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10