jay_the_hippie 's review for:

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

3.0

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I think the author is trying to tell us that the past and the future really are a lot like the present… that things don’t change as much as we tend to think they do. I think he’s trying to tell us that real life affects the contents of books, but also that books can alter or color or add understanding to our lives. I think the author wants us to realize that Virginia Wolf was a real person struggling with a real life while she was writing her famous novels, and that she had moments both good and bad. I think he wants to tell us what he has learned about Virginia Wolf’s novels, but also that it can’t be told out in a straightforward manner like an ordinary tale, and yet that is the only tool he has. I think the author wants us to think about how the tiny little everyday events of a single day can be so important, more important than we usually remember.. I think the author wants to play with madness. I think that the author is saying that throwing a party and preparing for a party and cancelling a party can be every bit as important as fighting a war or investigating a murder or destroying a plague of zombies. I think the author has included special messages for me in this book, telling me that I need to write the story that I know or it will sink, stonelike, to the bottom of the river and be lost for all time. I think Virginia Wolf possessed the author and compelled him to write with such intricate detail the events of a day, describing the moments and thoughts and images in the same intertwined beauty that one can see of multi-hued pasta freshly rinsed and relaxing in a colander above the sparkling steel of the kitchen sink. I think the author intended to use the letter ‘e’ more times in this work but found it difficult to do so while balancing his other concerns. I think he wanted me to read this book on this very day for some purpose I may never fully comprehend. I think the author captured something elusive, ghostly, and free in this net of firm little words and long straight lines of text, but even this thing this beast this creature this living introspection cannot and will not and nevermore shall be able to be or even compete with reality. I think the author wants us to remember that there is another hour that comes next, after this one, and then that one will also be succeeded by yet another, so that we can sometime feel we will be buried deeper and deeper with the coming hours, and that while some people enjoy, in fact, live for that constant build of sameness, for others it feels like being shoveled under and the struggle can become so much, too much, much too much, and keeps increasing. I think the author wants us to understand.