But there are still the hours, aren't there? One and then another, and then you get through that one and then, my god, there's another.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham, first published in 1998

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary

The Hours follows three women over the course of a single day: Virginia Woolf, the famous writer, Clarissa Vaughan (aka Clarissa Dalloway, but not the original fictional one), and Laura Brown, a housewife who is reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. If it sounds meta, that's because it is. Our women are in three different time periods, in three different geographies. Here's the breakdown:

Setting 1: Richmond, a suburb of London, 1941 - Virginia Woolf; we follow a day in her life, watching her write Mrs. Dalloway, hosting a tea party for her sister and her nieces and nephews, inhabiting her sense of suburban claustrophobia

Setting 2: Los Angeles, 1949 - Laura Brown; it is her husband's birthday, so she makes several cakes, runs away from her life briefly to a hotel to read Mrs. Dalloway, returns and feels intensely trapped

Setting 3: New York City, late 20th century - Clarissa (Dalloway) Vaughan; Clarissa is throwing a party for her close friend, Richard, who is a famous writer and living with advanced AIDs

Note: they are listed in chronological order by year, though they happen in various orders throughout the book.

Spoiler (Not Really) Over (But Let's Pretend): Continue Here

Hello, dear blobbists!

  If that seems like a rather sparing summary, well, there you have it. The book doesn't contain a lot in the way of plot (OK, there's a 'party' or a hosting of people happening for each woman, several cakes are baked, flowers are bought, a friend dying of AIDS throws himself out a window, and Virginia low key tries to run away to London proper) or rather I guess I should say it's not particularly driven by the plot, which, if you know me, is typically not my favorite kind of writing. 

  I will also say, quite frankly, that I did not care for this book. I thought I would like it, as I am a big Virginia Woolf fan, and I read Mrs. Dalloway earlier on the list. While I didn't like that book quite as much as I love To the Lighthouse, I would still say Woolf is one of my favorite authors. I think precisely because that's the case, I didn't like this literary exploration. It felt a bit like I was reading a creative writing prompt, like, "what if I extrapolated this 'one day' concept to three inter-related versions of a woman?" And maybe that's interesting to some people, but it didn't resonate with me. I'm honestly kind of surprised it got the fame and clout it did, and I wonder if he hadn't centered Woolf's work, if that still would have been the case.

 That said, I shall blob on it just the same. Here are my overall reflections, in no particular order. 

Writing as a (famous) person in a fictionalized way

I think my biggest issue with this book was that Cunningham decides to include Virginia Woolf as one of his three characters, and then writes from her point of view, which feels, to me, presumptive at best, and offensive at worst. Sure, he's claiming this is a 'fictionalized' version of her, but he also carefully made all the particulars around her true to her life, so does he honestly not think he's impact people's perception of her actual life? 

He references her migraines and hearing voices, as well as depression, and I know that he did research on and gathered notes from various journals and sources, but as a person who lives her own life with depression, anxiety, and OCD, I wouldn't want anyone else speaking for me. And the fact that he starts the book off with the day of her suicide just seems really icky to me, like how dare you assume you know or can imagine what may have been running through her head? He also uses a lot of her own work - pages from Mrs. Dalloway, parts of her suicide letter to her husband - and while it's clearly legal, it seems like freeloading to me.

A little too 'cutesy' for my taste

OK, nothing about this book is cutesy, but I couldn't think of a better word. What I'm referring to here is the way that Cunningham creates these symmetries and circular components by doing things like renaming characters with the same first letter of their names from Mrs. Dalloway, or introducing a side lesbian love interest to mirror the one in Mrs. Dalloway, or SPOILER - when we find out at the end of the novel that 'Richard', of Clarissa's world, is Laura Brown's toddler, Richie. It just fit together a bit too neatly for my taste, which also leans itself to that sort of 'writing a thesis'/'creative prompt' vibe.

Not just depressing, somehow much worse

I love reading literature by great female authors who also struggled with depression because I see reflections of myself in their work. Somehow, this book was not so much depressing as it was, overwhelmingly dark. At one point, Richard's cloistered apartment is described as 'having, more than anything, an underwater aspect'. I think that describes how this book made me feel. I suppose it's a special ability of a writer to make you feel so deeply uncomfortable and claustrophobic, but it wasn't an experience I enjoyed. Here are some examples of this murky darkness.

He will watch her forever. He will always know when something is wrong. (ok, that's nice, right?) He will always know precisely when and how much she has failed. oh, ok, that's where we were heading.

She herself is trapped here forever, posing as a wife. She must get through this night, and then tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must please, she must continue. Says who? I don't know that I fully bought this supposed trapped housewife claustrophobia. It felt like Cunningham was just writing based on a reading of "The Feminine Mystique".

For an instant, no more than that, she has imagined some sort of ghost self, a second version of her, standing immediately behind, watching. It's nothing. This. There was so much of this in the novel.

It would be as simple as checking into a hotel room. It would be as simple as that. Think how wonderful it might be to no longer matter. Think how wonderful it might be to no longer worry, or struggle, or fail. 

Hard to tease out what Cunningham's writing was actually like

Something else I struggled with, which was very apparent by the fact that I initially underlined some lines I liked, and then underlined almost nothing from the second half of the novel, was really teasing out Michael Cunningham's writing. I mean, sure, ostensibly, the whole novel is his 'creation', but if you take out the cutesy Mrs. Dalloway fan-fiction gimmicks, and you take out Virginia Woolf's actual (sacred) life, where is Michael Cunningham? And I think I just kept getting really caught up in the little tricks and twists and it really kept me from getting to know or really enjoy his personal writing style, which ended up feeling obfuscated.

The women, in a nutshell

Here's each woman encapsulated in one line.

Clarissa

Still, she loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows other people must love it too...Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed?

Laura

In another world, she might have spent her whole life reading.

Virginia

I'm taking a walk. (Real talk, she's running away.) Does it seem mysterious?

The way we smell

Blobbists, do you think we have a particular and unique smell? There's a line where Clarissa reflects on Richard's personal smell, and a friend of mine mentioned that a boyfriend didn't like her natural smell, and I really just feel like I've never thought of a person and thought, yes, that's their SMELL. I mean, sure, if they wear perfumes, or use specific lotions or soaps, but do we really have an US smell?

She goes to him, kisses the curve of his forehead. Up close like this, she can smell his various humors. His pores exude not only his familiar sweat (which has always smelled good to her, starchy and fermented; sharp in the way of wine) but the smell of his medicines, a powdery, sweetish smell. He smells, too, of unfresh flannel (though the laundry is done once a week, or oftener) and slightly, horribly (it is his only repellent smell) of the chair in which he spends his days.

A bit of levity

So, don't read this book if you're looking for laughs. Here's the one time I laughed, which turns out to actually be quite morbid in the end. 

Clarissa: 'Good morning, my dear', Clarissa says again.

Richard: 'Look at all those flowers.'

Clarissa: 'They're for you.'

Richard: 'Have I died?'

Special people who make you feel special

Okay, so Clarissa ends up taking the parts of this that seem like a compliment and making it more about how Richard is egotistical, which is not at all true in my case, but the initial parts of these lines reminded me of my good friend, Mar:

Richard cannot imagine a life more interesting or worthwhile than those being lived by his acquaintances and himself, and for that reason one often feels exalted, expanded, in his presence. It is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and for a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through to your essence, weighs your true qualities...and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has. This is how I always feel after talking to her or spending time with her, and I loved that the line made me think of her. <3

Lines I liked

• Don't we love children, in part, because they live outside the realm of cynicism and irony?

• In the morning heat of June, with the robe whisked away, the chair in its bold new fabric seems surprised to find itself a chair at all.

• She is the animating principle, the life of the house. 

• The apartment has, more than anything, an underwater aspect.

• She has caught up with herself.

• Richie, on his mother: He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all. 

• He looks insane and exalted, both ancient and childish, astride the windowsill like some scarecrow equestrian, a park statue by Giacometti.

Referents and Reverberations

Certainly this book had some obvious referents, like Mrs. Dalloway. In addition, two lines stood out.

• I seem to have fallen out of time.  This line reminded me of a line from Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

• You don't need to charm or entertain. You don't need to put in a performance. This line reminded me of a line from Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own: No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

Words I Learned

equipoise - noun - balance of forces or interests; verb - balance or counterbalance (something)

Well blob-friends, I'll leave you with a few lines from Richard, who I think was ultimately my favorite character. 

Richard smiles wistfully. 'Oh well, omens,' he says. 'Do you believe in omens? Do you think we're taken that much notice of? Do you think we're worried over like that? My, wouldn't that be wonderful? Well, maybe it's so.' 

'I took the Xanax and the Ritalin. They work wonderfully together. I feel wonderful. I opened all the blinds, but still, I found I wanted more air and light. I had a hard time getting up here, I don't mind telling you.' lollll

I'm afraid I can't make the party. <3

 I think I found the scene where Richard falls out of the window particularly resonant because of Hotel New Hampshire, and that book's line, 'Keep passing the open windows.' Here's my blob bit from that book, which was the first on this second list of hundred, so many books (and 8 years!) ago:

'Keep passing the open windows' is a reference to a sort of morbid but optimistic catchphrase the family passes on to each other from time to time -- it's an allusion to an artist who jumps out of an open window and commits suicide, but leaves a note proclaiming, "Life is serious but art is fun. It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious." I love the confusing poetry of these lines, and the idea that, even in times of great darkness, we can remind each other to simply 'Keep passing the open windows'. [2015 - Survive Alive!] Because Irving is a realist and not remotely bound to the perfect happy ending, one member of the family doesn't manage to keep passing the open windows. But the harmony in the novel's outcome and its ultimate triumph is not in the glamour of a simple and comfortable traditional happy ending, but the messy and raw, yet stunningly brilliant beauty of a complex and nuanced denouement.

So with that, I'll leave you, reminding you all to keep passing the open windows, and embark on Interpreter of Maladies, after which I'll be on my final ten books.