MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, By Nightfall, and The Snow Queen, as well as the collection A Wild Swan and Other Tales, and the nonfiction book Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories. The Hours was a New York Times bestseller, and the winner of both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Raised in Los Angeles, Michael Cunningham lives in New York City, and is a senior lecturer at Yale University.
"The overall impression is that of a delicate, triumphant glance,
an acknowledgement of Woolf that takes her into Cunningham's own
territory, a place of late-century danger but also of treasurable
hours."
--Michael Wood, The New York Times Book Review "An exquisitely
written, kaleidoscopic work that anchors a floating postmodern
world on pre-modern caissons of love, grief and transcendent
longing."
--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Cunningham] has
deftly created something original, a trio of richly interwoven
tales that alternate with one another chapter by chapter, each of
them entering the thoughts of a character as she moves through the
small details of a day . . . Cunningham's emulation of such a
revered writer as Woolf is courageous, and this is his most mature
and masterful work."
--Jameson Currier, The Washington Post Book World "Rich and
beautifully nuanced scenes follow one upon the other . . . [a]
gargantuan accomplishment."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A smashing literary tour de
force and an utterly invigorating reading experience. If this book
does not make you jump up from the sofa, looking at life and
literature in new ways, check to see if you have a pulse."
--Ann Prichard, USA Today "Cunningham has created something
original, a trio of richly interwoven tales...his most mature and
masterful work."
--The Washington Post Book World "The Hours is in fact a lovely
triumph. Cunningham honors both Mrs. Dalloway and its creator with
unerring sensitivity, thanks to his modesty of intention and his
sovereignly affecting prose . . . With his elliptical evocation of
Mrs. Dalloway, he has managed to pay great but quiet
tribute--reminding us of the gorgeous, ferocious beauty of what
endures."
--Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe "In his smart and playful new
novel, Michael Cunningham has revisited, and masterfully
reinvented, Virginia Woolf's great--and greatest--novel, Mrs.
Dalloway . . . The triumph of The Hours is that it somehow manages
to be both artful and sincere, striking nary a false note . . . And
the triumph of the book is no less the triumph of its author. Just
when it seemed that it was no longer permissible to pay respect to
the literature of the past, Cunningham has done so with an
undeniable skill and depth of feeling."
--Justin Cronin, Philadelphia Inquirer "Cunningham writes
beautifully about relationships, living and dying, and love...it's
hard not to audibly gasp with both pleasure and shock."
--Detroit Free Press "Luxurious . . . The Hours tells three
interwoven stories; Woolf's novel echoes through all of them in
interesting and uncanny ways.... Cunningham writes with an empathy
that approaches Woolf's."
--Lisa Cohen, Newsday "The Hours is one of the most ambitious,
tightly conceived, and beautifully written of this season's fiction
offerings . . . Cunningham has written lyrically, and has inhabited
Woolf's prose magnificently."
--Amy Blair, The Boston Book Review "Cunningham dazzles in his
inspired novel The Hours."
--Vanity Fair "[A] fine novel . . . bringing to light the buried
connection his three characters share, capturing in each the
illuminating and transforming moment."
--Dallas Morning News "[The Hours] is both a clever tribute to the
life and work of Virginia Woolf, and a brilliant examination of the
quietly desperate lives of three women."
--Seattle Times "His language is always on key, unfailing and
measured, rich without sating, and haunting in the way Woolf's is.
It is resonant with the suggestiveness of suppressed desires and
unexpressed needs."
--Alyce Miller, Chicago Tribune "Intricate . . . richly imagined .
. . a profoundly compassionate meditation on life and death."
--Elle "What, [Cunningham] essentially asks in The Hours, is it
like to grow up and older, to succeed and fail, to have friends and
lovers and children and parents who delight and disappoint, provide
joy and sorrow?"
--Charles Ganee, Vogue "[An] ambitious and largely successful
attempt to weave the life and sensibility of Virginia Woolf into a
story of his own characters."
--New York "[A] brilliant tour de force . . . His ending is
surprising and stunning. This is a skillfully wrought novel
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Virginia Woolf and crafted in
keeping with her rare excellence."
--The Miami Herald "Brilliant . . . haunting--winding skeins of
words that, as they unspool, render vividly the three heroines'
complex interior lives."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch "[A] remarkable new novel . . . A
concise, brilliant rendering of three eras."
--Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Clever and beautifully rendered . . .
In meshing the women's inner lives with Woolf's insights and
themes, Cunningham creates a richly layered whole that suggests
what we can reasonably ask of life."
--The Roanoke Times "Cunningham here undertakes perhaps one of the
most daunting literary projects imaginable . . . Cunningham's
portrait of Woolf is heartbreaking . . . With The Hours, Cunningham
has done the impossible: he has taken a canonical work of
literature and, in reworking it, made it his own."
--Yale Book Review "A novel so mesmerizing and true that it echoes
not only in the mind but also in the heart long after it has had
its final say . . . Triumphant . . . In paying homage to one
visionary writer, Cunningham has proved himself to be another."
--New York Daily News "Brilliant . . . It's the work of a talented
writer taking an adventurous plunge below the obvious surface of
things. The Hours has the heft of flesh and blood, the subtlety of
art."
--The Hartford Courant "At its best, and that is a lyrical,
crystalline best, The Hours embodies a balance between lethal,
life-changing vision and the daily, mundane work of caring,
writing, and actually changing one's world."
--City Pages Awards/Mentions:
National Book Critics Circle Award - Nominee, National Book Critics
Circle Awards - Nominee, PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, ALA Stonewall
Book Award - Winner, Boston Book Review - Nominee, Book Sense Book
of the Year Award - Nominee, International IMPAC Dublin Literary
Award - Nominee, Triangle Awards - Winner, National Books Critics
Circle Awards - Nominee, Pulitzer Prize Winner, ALA Notable Books -
Winner, Lambda Literary Award - Nominee
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