#27 - The Hours

This book makes you want to kill yourself...in the best way possible. The Hours, the third of the so far exemplary Oldfield Options, is a modern classic by Michael Cunningham, winning the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. The title - and further, the entirety of the novel - is referencing Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. There are three connected storylines in The Hours - Mrs. Woolf herself on her first day of writing; Mrs. Brown, a painfully suburban housewife who is reading the novel; and Mrs Vaughan, whose name Clarissa leads her to be nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway" by her dying writer friend Richard. All three, like Dalloway herself, are followed through an ordinary day that reveals extraordinary things.

The characters all share certain traits, some of which are more appealing to me than others. They're frightfully intelligent, with kind and caring domicile spouses who are simply trying to help. However, it is those demons that they need help from that are more insidious. None of them can look at themselves in the mirror. All of them can't shake a constant feeling of lack, of complacency and disgust therein. All of them have happy lives and yet cannot bear to be happy in them, and it would be more tragic if they didn't seem to revel in the irony of it. It may have been more the snapshot the book provides, but it seemed that at the greatest points of insanity they were happiest, while quiet peace brought only desperation. I should note that Vaughan wasn't the one in her storyline who exhibited these qualities, but her ex-lover Richard. I wish I could have felt more for the characters, but the way in which their own internal chaos overruled their care for others left too bitter a taste in my mouth.

The writing, however, was flawless. Truly powerful, evocative, and every other word you'd find on a New York Times bestseller book jacket, it really blew me away just how good it was. It may have been just due to being post-Melville, but it was just so smooth and nice to read, like a warm (alright, sometimes violently spicy) soup. All of the dialogue, the imagery and the stream-of-consciousness rhythms were expertly executed, leading to a fantastic book that fully deserves to be recognized as a classic equal to writers such as Woolf herself.

9/10