BOOK REVIEW: the hours by michael cunningham
sometimes you read a book and you are jealous. the world feels so real and grounded, so unforced but not thoughtless. the good characterization feels like sketches of people made in notebooks on public transit and brought to life even more vibrantly on the page, even more vibrantly than you ever could.
when reading THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham, i was met with a common sense of jealousy that i am often met with when interacting with great works of art. jealous of Cunninghamās ability to turn a phrase so delicately, and his natural ability take measured strides building towards the inevitable meaning of the novel without the need to brutishly hammer it in. and part of the greatness in this case is that it only made me want to read more. not only of Cunninghamās works, but of everything else i can get my hands on. i am no longer scared by my own ignorance.
in my reading, i also felt longing, and a desire to understand greatness everywhere. while every chapter and every interaction sops with meaning, i fear that much of it eschewed me. and thatās just fine. early in my literary journey i might have been distraught by this, but now it is a feeling i look for in everything. to understand a novel even partially is to have experienced it, and I live for experiences both good and bad.
when i first read MRS. DALLOWAY (the original novel by Virginia Woolf reworked into this story) i hated it. i was young and certain about my tastes. what could such a book offer me but the opportunity to critique? it felt like a perfect target: an experimental text with no plot alongside the dense diction classic novels are often packaged with. why be so risky if not to overstep the constraints of the medium? that much i appreciated at the time, but realized how much further Woolf could have taken it.
when reading THE HOURS, i was reminded of the freedom art brings us, and the stubbornness it often instills in us, too. art, no matter how great, i think can always be fine-tuned, and the reader will always have something to imagine in the authorās blindspot. what happens when you take these notions to their very extremes? you get THE HOURS. a meta-fictional, boundary-warping selection of character studies unerring in their approaches and unapologetic in their use of the already existing intellectual property of MRS DALLOWAY beloved by so many readers today.
there is something delectably addictive in not-understanding. and liberating. one thing i know is that i enjoyed this novel very much, and I could see now why it won the Pulitzer Prize. it is an autopsical celebration of literature, and profoundly bittersweet one. and where every other book would approach these themes clinically, this one doesnāt. THE HOURS doesnāt feel like the author lecturing you about meaning like a doctor lectures you about your diagnosis. Cunningham has a lot of faith in the readers to grapple the themes using the baggage they have, and thereās no doubt you can find all three protagonists to be relatable in their uniquely distressing ways.
even if you havenāt read MRS. DALLOWAY, i suggest giving this novel a shot. and maybe one day iāll get back to it, but right now iām savouring the meaning, even if it means iāll get a little bit hungry later.