The Hours by Michael Cunningham - 10 out of 10

 The Hours by Michael Cunningham

10 out of 10

There is optimism in the beautiful, great, Pulitzer and PEN/Faulkner Awards winner that includes a few very sad, heartbreaking narratives that share depression, suicide and Virginia Woolf, her masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway as common themes.

Virginia Woolf becomes a fictional character in The Hours – and Nicole Kidman has won a deserved Oscar for her portrayal of the genius author – and the writer explains in the acknowledgements at the end of the book that he has studied a number of biographies, diaries and books on the life of the phenomenal writer in order to describe a day in the life of one of the best creators who have walked the earth.

The author of Mrs. Dalloway meditates on the work in progress, entertains thoughts of suicide, and is bored in her home in the country, from where she departs to the railway station, with thoughts of leaving for London, to wonder the streets in the big city, while her husband Leonard worries about her.

Virginia Woolf expects the visit of her sister, Vanessa Bell, who arrives with her two sons and daughter significantly earlier than expected – they are expected at four in the afternoon, the time by which the nervous, rebellious servant, Nelly, would have returned from the capital with the tea and desert ordered by her mistress.

The children have found a bird in the road, that seems to be dying, for which they prepare a resting place, although somewhat cruelly they also arrange for the funeral, the departure which has not yet arrived, in the garden, with grass and roses placed around the poor creature.

Thoughts of death and dying itself are a common thread, in the story of Virginia Woolf and the other personages depicted in The Hours – Mrs. Brown, who reads Mrs. Dalloway and contemplates the end of her life and that of her neighbor, Kitty, Clarissa Vaughan – called Mrs. Dalloway by her dying, suicidal friend and acclaimed poet, Richard – has to see the dear man jump – actually slide is the better word -to his death in front of her eyes.

Clarissa Vaughan aka Mrs. Dalloway lives in New York with her lesbian partner, Sally, and she prepares for a party to honor her friend, Richard, who has just been awarded a very prestigious prize for poetry, but alas, he is dying of AIDS and furthermore, his body is decaying and what is worse, he is losing his mental faculties- he talks about the party as if it has already taken place- he has moments of brilliance, his old self still in control, but it will all be gone soon.

Mrs. D, as the poet calls her, is out to get some flowers, when she sees on the set of a motion picture, a movie star looking out of her trailer, it seems to be Meryl Streep – who would play Clarissa Vaughan in the adaptation of the book, in a very symbolic move – or Vanessa Redgrave- a couple of onlookers feel it might have been Susan Sarandon.

Clarissa Vaughan has had a love affair with Richard, decades ago – she is over fifty now – when they had a love triangle of sorts, Louis Waters being the other man involved in this complicated relationship, which continued with the poet and the latter as lovers, up to the point where they break up in the railway station in Rome.

The third story inserted in The Hours concerns Mrs. Brown, who lives in Los Angeles, in 1949, who has son, Richie, is expecting another, for she is pregnant, and reads Mrs. Dalloway in the morning, in bed, while she feels she should be in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for her son and husband, who would be celebrating his birthday today.

Later in the day, when she makes a first cake for Dan Brown, her neighbor, Kitty, walks in, announcing the surprising, worrying news that she has to see a doctor in the afternoon, because she has something in her vagina – was it there? – the probable reason why she did not have children.

Comforting the scared woman, Laura Brown thinks about the complexities of life, the fact that they would be adversaries in different circumstances, when Kitty kisses her on the mouth – the theme of homosexuality is another shared aspect – Virginia Woolf kisses her sister on the mouth, in a sensual, intimate moment.

Mrs. Brown is unhappy with the cake she made, to the point of breakdown, attributing to it the symbol of failure, even if it only had the name on the top slightly misplaced and her husband would appreciate it anyway – the fact that both Dan and Richie make wishes on the cake that they continue to have in the future all that they get in the present seems to be a minus in the eyes of Laura Brown, but gratitude for what you have is the first rule of happiness.

The protagonist of the third story is a complex woman, both happy with a certain moment and also ready to say maybe this was it, that flash of pleasure is enough for the whole life, which could easily end now, by taking the bottle of sleeping pills in the cabinet for instance.

The character is so frail, confused, on the edge, that if one is to anticipate, we could perhaps say that if she would not get medical help soon, she would do something drastic, kill herself, for she does leave the house, after throwing the first cake into the garbage, driving aimlessly, until she reaches a hotel, where she takes a room to read for about two hours…

The Hours, the title in fact is referred to by Richard Brown, the poet who is dying and losing his control over his mind, when he speaks about the fact that The Hours can represent a curse for those in his position, depressed, at the end of their rope, suffering and knowing that the end is neigh and even worse, before death, they would become a wreck, so the thought of one hour and then another and another is excruciating.

There are many exhilarating, exulting, beautiful passages, in spite of the fact that there is so much depression, thoughts of death and suicide in there, for instance the comparison between readers and ghosts, or this one:

“What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.”