The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Hours by Michael Cunningham has the distinction of being the only Long Distance Book Club book to have a written review posted by every single member of the club—seven in all. Because of the stringent mailing rule of sending the book in your possession at the beginning of each month regardless of whether you finished it or not, many books were sent off either unread or only partially read. About half of the members finished each book, so most titles ended up with three or four reviews each.

The Hours was probably the most read because it has the highest profile; we all knew the movie was opening at the end of the year. One of my friends, in her review, wrote, “Nicole Kidman as Woolf? OK. Meryl Streep as Mrs. Dalloway? Not what I had pictured.” Funny how, after the fact, you couldn’t picture anyone else.

While I never really got into the book, most of the other members enjoyed it very much. One review read:

“An excellent book if you like reading because you like great writing. I couldn't help but think I'd enjoy it a bit more if I was familiar with Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway. Not that I couldn't "get" the stories and characters w/o having done the prereading - just the opposite... I was impressed with a vivid character portrayal, and I wanted to see how accurate the picture was.”

This was my favorite comment:

“First off, I want to say that I did enjoy this book. I enjoyed it the way I enjoy a lot of recent fiction: the author is very clever, knows s/he is very clever, and spends a lot of time showing you the cleverness and their knowledge of it. I enjoy cleverness, so I am a prime audience for this sort of thing.”

For my part, I had to admit my own failings:

“…and then I got to the end and I realized that I never really had an epiphany, and it never really got better, and I wasn't all that sad to see it end, but worse, I felt like I missed something, because everyone said it was so clever…so it was one of those situations where I felt slightly dumb for not really getting it, but wondering if what I did get was really all there was to get, or if there was something more, but then I'm not a very careful reader anyway, and I guess that's just the way it is.”

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

tags: books book reviews book clubs Michael Cunningham