The Hours

By: Michael Cunningham

Narrated by: Michael Cunningham

Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Pulitzer prize, the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and nominated for 9 Academy Awards, The Hours is now available in audio.

Passionate, profound, and deeply moving, The Hours tells the story of three women: Clarissa Vaughan, who one New York morning goes about planning a party in honor of a beloved friend; Laura Brown, who in a 1950s Los Angeles suburb slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home; and Virginia Woolf, recuperating with her husband in a London suburb and beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway. By the end of the novel, the stories have intertwined, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace, demonstrating Michael Cunningham's deep empathy for his characters as well as the extraordinary resonance of his language.

©1998 Michael Cunningham (P)2003 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

Book Sense Book of the Year Award Finalist, Adult Fiction, 2001

"An exquisitely written, kaleidoscopic work that anchors a floating postmodern world on pre-modern caissons of love, grief and transcendent longing. (Los Angeles Times Book Review)
"A delicate, triumphant glance...A place of late-century danger but also of treasurable hours." (The New York Times Book Review )

and always, we have the hours

Would you consider the audio edition of The Hours to be better than the print version?

No.
The print version is beautiful. The book is poetry as plot and lyrics as dialogue. The only enhancement the audio brings is Michael Cunningham's heartbreak he feels for the characters he's created coming up. When a character hurts, he feels it. Not because he's a good actor, but because he's a good writer and you know that he's writing his own story with their words.

What other book might you compare The Hours to and why?

In a really out there way, The Game of Thrones series. I enjoy all the the point of view character's overlapping and interacting in each other's lives. Not to say that this book has anything in common with Game of Thrones.

What aspect of Michael Cunningham’s performance would you have changed?

He's hangs in his words a little too much. He reads them too you as if they're poetry. I listened to the whole book at time and a half because he would seem to pause heavily at every punctuation, at each sigh. Its beautiful at first, but the melancholy shifts from artful to irritating.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

You could literally point to any fucking chapter and I would sob so I don't know what you want from me here.
The part about unrequited queer love?
The part about abandonment?
The fear of the unknown.
The fear of being unloved.
The misogyny and homophobia that lead to Virgina's depression and her death.

Any additional comments?

Listen to it twice.

Difficult to follow

Unusual way to tell a story,has a good effect; however lost me many times. Not so interesting that I bothered to back up and figure out something I may have missed.

Fascinating

If you are not familiar with Virginia Woolf or her most famous work 'Mrs Dalloway' this piece may be confusing. If you are familiar with the outline of Virginia Woolf's life and writings, specifically her masterwork "Dalloway" - you will find this book interesting, enjoyable - a puzzle. Many of the reviews were negative regarding the author - Cunningham - reading the piece, as he is not a professional audiobook reader. I thought this would be off-putting initially - he has distinct New York accent to me, but in truth, his reading lent emphasis in an important way. To me, his reading matched the style of this particular book, in a way that made the presentation more harmonious.I did not think I would like it, but found I did like it very much.

Even if you haven't read Mrs. Dalloway

I haven't read Mrs. Dalloway, although I know the gist of it, but I still really enjoyed this story of three women's lives. The women are all white, upper middle class, and quite privileged so they aren't, on the surface, likely to elicit a lot of sympathy. "Not communicating well with servants" isn't high on my list of problems. But they all struggle internally and the author did a good job of making me care. At first I was put off by the fact that the narrator, telling the stories of women, is male. But then so is the author! And ultimately I found the narration quite suitable for the material.

Very dark

Well written and excellent parallels throughout the book to Mrs. Dalloway, but very dark and depressing.

Best Hours at Book Clu

The well written and narrated book by Michael Cunningham will help me appreciate our Hour long Book Club and will cherish the many more precious hours of our lives and enjoy every moment of it. Don’t let the weight of hard hours pull you down like the stone in Virginia Woolf sleeve. The company of your friends and family will help you out every time. Enjoy the stories 😊

Disliked narration so much could not listen

I should have listened to the sample for longer... but this is the kind of narration I could easily listen to for 10 min, but that's about the max. Just be sure to listen to the sample well before you purchase.

Haunting

The characters in this book continue to pop into my head years after reading it. I will read it again soon.

Love it!

The movie was wonderful, the book was wonderful, the audio book was wonderful, this is my all time favorite book - movie.

Nice book!

Nice book. Very reflective and with a strong moral! Adapted to everyone starting around fourteen years old.