As usual, I knew nothing about the book before starting to read it. The cover made it clear it had been made into a movie -- even I recognized Meryl Streep -- but I didn't recall ever seeing the film. I'm pretty oblivious when it comes to cinema and had no recollection of a movie that it turns out was both a critical and financial success. According to The Google, it made tons of money and resulted in an Oscar for Nicole Kidman.
Small digression. I find it intriguing that beautiful actresses, no matter how skilled they are, seem to get tapped for awards when they take on roles that erase their physical attractiveness. Kidman suffered through long sessions in the make-up trailer thanks to the prosthetic nose and other enhancements designed to make her physically resemble the author Virginia Woolf. (The Younger Daughter had seen the film and said she didn't realize it was Nicole Kidman until she saw the credits.) The following year Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in Monster, a role for which Theron gained 30 pounds and shaved off her eyebrows. Of course, male actors do it, too, like Matthew McConaughey for The Dallas Buyers Club. He lost over 50 pounds so he could realistically portray someone suffering from AIDS.
Back to the book.. . . As is true for most of the Pulitzer winners I read, my knowledge of either the book or the author was basically nonexistent when I picked it up. My initial reaction was relief that it was a modestly sized trade paperback and not something with the physical heft of War and Peace or Kristin Lavransdatter. Both of which I enjoyed reading, but they weren't Pulitzer winners. The hefty Pulitzer winners have not been nearly as readable as anything by Tolstoy. If a Pulitzer winner looks like it would make a nice solid doorstop, I don't see that as a good sign.
The Hours offers vignettes from three different women's lives: the author Virginia Woolf, a fairly young stay-at-home wife in late 1950s Los Angeles, and a middle-aged lesbian in New York City in the early 1990s. The three women are tied together by Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf is in the early stages of writing the book, she's working out plot points in her head. The L.A. trad wife is reading Mrs. Dalloway, and the New Yorker was nicknamed Mrs. Dalloway when she was in college. Her first name is Clarissa, the same as Mrs. Dalloway, so the nickname made sense at the time. Now, 30+ years later, she's not as sanguine about it as she was in her 20s.
I have never read Mrs. Dalloway so I have no idea how the descriptions of the three women match up with themes in the book. I do know about Virginia Woolf's life (and death) but I have never read anything by her. I'm not sure why. Woolf is a feminist icon so maybe I should feel a little guilty about not knowing anything about her actual work. Then again, if she'd been published in one of the genres I have an addiction to (mysteries and science fiction and fantasy) I might have read her but then she wouldn't be the iconic author she is remembered as.
So, having approached the book with my usual level of blissful ignorance and feeling cautiously optimistic ("How bad can it be? It got optioned for a movie."), how was the actual book? Brief summary: Definitely readable but thin. As noted, the novel offers slices of life, basically one day each, for the three women. The first chapter kind of threw me for a loop -- it's a description of Woolf's suicide in 1941 -- but then the frame shifts. In Woolf's case the narrative jumps back to a summer day in 1923. She's thinking about her next book (Mrs. Dalloway), preparing for a visit from her sister Vanessa, trying to persuade her husband to move back into London proper instead of being stuck in a dull suburb, and worrying about her own mental health. She apparently suffered from headaches so severe they triggered hallucinations.
The book then jumps forward in time to a day in the life of "Mrs. D," the middle-aged New Yorker. She's running errands, shopping for fresh flowers, fussing about the health of the friend who gave her the Mrs. Dalloway nickname, and remembering incidents from back when she and the friend were young. He's now a well respected poet who's just been awarded a prestigious prize so Mrs. D is planning to host a party celebrating his accomplishments. She's worrying about the guest list (did she inadvertently invite someone Richard wouldn't want to see?), worrying about her 19-year-old daughter's friendship with a feminist activist, worrying about life in general. One odd little bit of business is while she's at the florist she notices a film company is set up down the block. There are a couple trailers for the actors, one of whom is reportedly a major female actress. She wonders if it could be Meryl Streep. Given that Meryl Street plays Mrs. D in the film, that struck me as an interesting coincidence.
As for the party Mrs. D is stressing about, in the end other events cause its cancellation.
The Woolf and Mrs. D chapters are reasonably interesting; the trad wife in L.A. was more of a slog. Not surprisingly, it's the thinnest sections. She's young, has been married for a few years, has one child (a boy) and is pregnant again. She is passionate reader, has always had a reputation as a book worm, and given any sort of a choice she'd rather read than do anything else. She's also suffering from massive insecurity. She worries that she's doing a bad job as a parent, she throws out a cake because the frosting isn't perfect, she worries that she's lost herself. She feels sufficiently unmoored that she brings her 3 year old son to a neighbor to be watched while she drives into the city and gets a hotel room for a few hours so she can have a quiet place to read with no other obligations. Is this nod to A Room of Her Own? (One of the multiple Virginia Woolf novels I've heard of but never read.)
I'm sure book clubs had discussions centering on questions like "What is the theme of this book?" I have no idea. Maybe it's that we all live in our own heads too much and worry about stuff it's not worth worrying about? Bottom line was The Hours is readable. Michael Cunningham can write. Can he write at an Edna Ferber or Upton Sinclair level? No, but good if not great beats quite a few other Pulitzer winners. On the usual1 to 10 scale, it's a respectable 6 or 7. Better than average and not work to read.
Would I recommend it to other readers? Yes, with the minor caveat of warning them not to be put off by the description of Virginia putting rocks in her pockets and walking into the Ouse in the first chapter. Cunningham must have realized a drowned woman wouldn't have much to say or think about. Virginia breathing in 1923 is a lot more engaging than a very damp Virginia drifting in a river
Next up on the list, assuming a copy of American Pastoral doesn't drop from the sky, a collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
