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The Hours
Michael Cunningham. Picador USA: 2000. ISBN: 0312243022. 230 pages.
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About the Author
A page of detailed biographical information on The Hours, including excerpts from interviews in
which Cunningham interprets his own work.
“I think it’s more like the way a jazz musician might do a riff on an older established piece of music.” Cunningham says
when asked about the way Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours work together. “It doesn’t claim or conceal the older
piece of music, but it takes that music and turns it into something else.”
Character Tree
A list of major characters and their dominant characteristics and values, showing characters’ relationships
to each other.
We’ve followed Cunningham’s lead and organized our character descriptions after the sections in the novel. You’ll read about
the characters from “Mrs. Dalloway” (New York City, the late twentieth century); “Mrs. Woolf” (Richmond, 1923 and 1941); and
“Mrs. Brown” (Los Angeles, 1949).
Streams of Themes
A breakdown of potential major discussion themes in The Hours, including ways these themes are
interconnected.
Cunningham’s novel is full of juicy themes: love, fame, art, and insanity are just a few. In this section, we explore these
thematic concerns in both The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway.
Doorways to Discussion
A chronologically and thematically organized list of discussion questions, which function to
explore, in a logical and thoughtful manner, the questions and possibilities that The Hours evokes.
Like the Character Tree, we’ve divided this section into the novel’s three major parts. There’s lots to discuss in The
Hours, and here’s an example of the 41 questions featured in this section: “What does the novel have to say about the
relationship of art to madness? Can the brand of “insanity” that the mentally unbalanced characters experience instead be
called a heightened state of awareness, a strengthened ability to see something that is invisible to others?”
All in the Family
A synopsis of the literary traditions and genres with which The Hours is affiliated and a brief
explanation of these connections, giving your book group the opportunity to understand Cunningham’s novel in a larger
literary perspective.
We try to include just enough information on Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway (which describes one June day
in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a middle-aged English society woman who spends her day preparing for an evening party) so
that if you don’t have time to read Mrs. Dalloway, you’ll still understand how Cunningham makes use of Woolf’s story
and style.
Talk Back to the Critics
Excerpts of some major critical reviews of The Hours from authoritative journals,
newspapers, and magazines. We encourage your book group to enjoy the opportunity to argue with expert opinion.
Most critics rave about The Hours and admire Cunningham’s prose and his brilliant “riff” on Woolf’s famous modernist
novel. And yet sometimes the most interesting reviews are those that seem to come out of left field, so to speak, like this
one: “The Hours is a gay man’s rendition of the lives of gay women, in three subplots. The rapprochement is only
incomplete to the extent that Cunningham tends to find lesbian relationships boring.”
Taste Test
A selection of other books on subjects similar to those in The Hours to consider for future book group
meetings or for private reading.
If you’re intrigued with the way Cunningham creates a fictional character out of a real person, if you admire Cunningham’s
use of multiple perspectives, or if you want to catch up on other recent literary prizewinners, we’ve included lots of books
we think you’ll enjoy!
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