I read this book for Nicole Kidman. Because of her I wanted to see the movie "The Hours," and because of that I wanted to read the book first. For those who don't know, "The Hours" revolves around one day in the life of three women from different time periods and in different parts of the world who are all connected by the Virginia Woolf novel "Mrs. Dalloway." The first is Virginia Woolf herself, as she is writing the novel in England in the 1920s; the second is Laura Brown, a surburban housewife in California in the 1940s, who is reading "Mrs. Dalloway;" and the third is Clarissa Vaughan, a lesbian in modern day New York, whose writer friend has nicknamed her "Mrs. Dalloway," and whose day bears a striking resemblance to the character's.
"The Hours" is definitely not the kind of book I normally read. I've never read anything else by Michael Cunningham for a basis of comparison either. I found the book to be relatively interesting for taking place over one day, where nothing particularly interesting really happens (except at the end of Clarissa's day). A lot the time I really had to push myself to get through the long paragraphs detailing each woman's train of thought as the were, for example, arranging flowers or some mundane task. Many times I just wanted to slap the characters and yell, "Get over it!" but there were a couple times when I actually smiled about something. I could relate to Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown both feeling like they wanted to "escape" their houses just for a few hours. Virgina absconds to the train station without telling anyone, and Laura drops her son off at the babysitter's and pays for a hotel room in the city just to read her book for two and a half hours. Another description that I particularly liked was Clarissa's thought about her writer friend, Richard, the way he viewed everyone else as characters, and how some people were drawn to him because that made them feel more dramatic and significant. I know people who do the same thing, but I've never seen it written out before.
I have heard critics say that the book has an anti-male sentiment, that the message is to abandon your husband and/or children, as Virginia and Laura do, and that Clarissa, the lesbian character is the most well-adjusted. I do not view it this way. Clarissa's thoughts show that she is not completely fulfilled in her relationship. She obsesses on her friend, Richard, their kiss when they were in college, and the lost possibility that she could be married to him if things had turned out differently. To me, the main message of the book was that a person can have a life that appears good or perfect from the outside, but some little things that seem insignificant to others, are of such importance to a person that it can drive them to a drastic action. You never know what is going on in their minds every day. An example is Laura making the birthday cake for her husband. She bases her whole self-worth on the cake looking perfect, and when she is finished there are some crumbs in the icing and one of the letters is squashed. She feels it reflects so badly on her that she throws the whole cake away and starts over again. This contributes to her overall feeling that she is incompetent as a wife and mother.
Would I read another Micheal Cunningham book? Maybe for Ewan MacGregor.