The Hours

I read another Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Hours, by Michael Cunningham.  Riveting…  The novel tells the tale of three generations of women, Virginia Woolf (as herself), a woman from the 1950s (mother of one and expecting another), and finally a female editor from the 1990s.  The action takes place during one day and all connected to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (as Woolf was in the midst of writing it!).  The author used an ingenious writing approach to connect the three women.  Woolf’s mental illness, similar to the issues that the character Dalloway faced, was present in all three women with a twist in connecting all three of them.  It is a beautifully written book and the theme of suicide certainly does leave a reader with a sense of depression and anxiety for woman in our society as a whole.  To be able to take a piece of writing like Woolf’s and add characters directly impacted and connected to Woolf is pure genius.  Cunningham in no way is replicating Woolf’s work but adding to the level of complexity that only Woolf can do.  This is Pulitzer Prize writing and worth a read.  Not simple stuff at all.  Adding today’s social issues like AIDS and you have it all.  Probably not something to read on a rainy day in February.  What I re-learn on reading books like this, not everyone’s story is rosy and happy.  Life is complicated and the book’s cover has lots of things behind it.