The Hours
First published 1998 · 230 pages · about 4 hours to read
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About this book
A daring, deeply affecting third novel by the author of A Home at the End of the World and Flesh and Blood. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham, widely praised as one of the most gifted writers of his generation, draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf to tell the story of a group of contemporary characters struggling with the conflicting claims of love and inheritance, hope and despair.
The narrative of Woolf's last days before her suicide early in World War II counterpoints the fictional stories of Richard, a famous poet whose life has been shadowed by his talented and troubled mother, and his lifelong friend Clarissa, who strives to forge a balanced and rewarding life in spite of the demands of friends, lovers, and family.
Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, this is Cunningham's most remarkable achievement to date.
Books like The Hours
Quotes
“What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.”
More quotes
“It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death.”
“He makes her think sometimes of a mouse singing amorous ballads under the window of a giantess.”
“...the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.”
Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0).
More by Michael Cunningham
- A Wild Swan: And Other TalesA Wild Swan: And Other Tales2015
- The Snow QueenThe Snow Queen2014
- By NightfallBy Nightfall2010
- Specimen DaysSpecimen Days2005
- Flesh and BloodFlesh and Blood1995
- A Home at the End of the WorldA Home at the End of the World1990