The problem must lie with me – I didn’t really enjoy the Pulitzer prize-winning book “The Hours” by Michael Cunningham. The novel was adapted into a film of the same title which won Nicole Kidman a Best Actress Oscar.
The narrative structure is interesting enough with 3 parallel narratives of the lives of 3 women going on at the same time. I shan’t go into the telling of the story due to my lack of time. Most of you have probably watched the film anyway. Even if you didn’t, you have probably read some review or another and know a little about the story.
The whole book describes a day in the life of these 3 women who exist in 3 different time periods. British author Virginia Woolf in 1923, Laura Brown in 1949 and Clarissa Dalloway in the 1990s. These three women are linked to the novel “Mrs Dalloway” in some small way or another.
So the book just plods along, describing every minuscule detail of everything that goes on in the characters’ minds, their surroundings, where they go, what they do, how many steps they take to walk to the door etc.
I mean, it’s pretty amazing that an author can flesh out his characters so well, making them into extremely real people. It was also interesting to note that Cunningham follows the same style as Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway” where the entire novel is set in the day of the life of the protagonist Mrs Dalloway. It seems an appropriate salute to Virginia Woolf since Cunningham was obviously inspired by Woolf in writing this novel.
But still, I didn’t enjoy the novel ‘cos I felt that the pace was too slow for me. It doesn’t seem to move along. However, I would really like to watch the film just to see how the novel has been adapted. When the film was released, I remember I didn’t watch it because I didn’t feel like watching anything too serious at that point in time.
Anyway, I will have to stop my reading for a while and now start concentrating on finishing my assignments. There’s a whole lot of them screaming for my attention! Argh!