Book Review: The Hours

Michael Cunningham’s The Hours is a gem of a book. I had not read it when I saw the movie in 2003, and decided not to read it while the movie was still fresh in my mind. I’m glad I waited.

I chose to read it now because I was curious to see how Cunningham had structured a book that contained three stories happening in three different time periods. I am attempting to do something similar in my fourth novel, and I wondered if Cunningham had used any literary “tricks” and whether they were successful or not. (I’m also reading A.S. Byatt’s Possession for the same reasons.)

There are no tricks in The Hours. In fact, it’s outwardly very simple in structure, with alternating chapters using the names of the three main characters: Mrs. Woolf (Virginia), Mrs. Brown (Laura), and Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa Vaughan). But it’s deceptively simple, because, in fact, the narrative thread that connects all three characters and time periods is Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway. In the book, Woolf is writing it, Mrs. Brown is reading it, and Clarissa Vaughan (who was given the nickname Mrs. Dalloway years earlier by her former lover, Richard) is living it.

All three women’s lives are touched by homosexuality and suicide. The three time periods, 1923, 1949 and 1999, provide a framework and a milieu that illustrate the ways in which our attitudes have and haven’t changed. Clarissa Vaughan, who was in love with and had an affair with a bisexual man, Richard, now lives with a woman in a stable relationship in Manhattan. Richard, who is dying of AIDS, is a poet/novelist who is about to receive a prestigious literary prize. Clarissa is planning a pre-award party for him, and a lot of her activity is based on buying the flowers for that party (cf. Mrs. Dalloway in the original novel).

Laura Brown shares an almost-kiss and a yearning with her neighbor Kitty in post-war suburban California, where she is driven almost to suicide by the stifling role of wife and mother. Most of her activity is centered on baking a cake for her husband’s birthday, throwing it away because it isn’t perfect, and baking another one. She steals a few hours from her suffocating existence and rents a hotel room where she can read Woolf’s novel undisturbed and preserve her sanity.

Virginia Woolf, as we know, was married to Leonard Woolf but had affairs with women, most notably Vita Sackville-West, and committed suicide in 1941. She is followed in the novel on a day in her life in 1923 when she begins to write Mrs. Dalloway, and attempts to maintain her sanity in the face of crippling headaches and the suffocatingly protective attitude of her husband.

What I most appreciate about The Hours is the subtlety and the sensitivity of the writing. Cunningham has achieved both simplicity and complexity in this book. He has connected the seemingly separate stories in unexpected and surprising ways as if he hadn’t intended them to be connected, but they just were, because the larger themes of living, loving and dying are inevitably connected and we can’t unconnect them. He does this by giving us glimpses of common (and by that I mean common to us all) activities and emotions.

She brushes her teeth, brushes her hair, and starts downstairs. She pauses several treads from the bottom, listening, waiting; she is again possessed (it seems to be getting worse) by a dream-like feeling, as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately rehearsed. What, she wonders, is wrong with her.

This could be any of the women in the book, or anyone reading the book, for that matter. Later, this same woman experiences a moment of “rightness” after things go well for her.

It does not seem impossible that she has undergone a subtle but profound transformation, here in this kitchen, in this most ordinary of moments: She has caught up with herself. She has worked so long, so hard, in such good faith, and now she’s gotten the knack of living happily, as herself, the way a child learns at a particular moment to balance on a two-wheel bicycle. It seems she will be fine. She will not lose hope.

Cunningham finds universality in the particular but doesn’t flaunt it in an epic way. The Hours is not a large book, not a grand book full of heroes and heroines. It rejoices in the simple details of life that give momentary satisfaction and make us want to keep going, to step into the next moment, and the one after that. Life is not about leaping from mountaintop to mountaintop. It’s about taking small steps and noticing things along the way.

This June, again, the trees along West Tenth Street have produced perfect little leaves from the squares of dog dirt and discarded wrappers in which they stand. Again the window box of the old woman next door, filled as it always is with faded red plastic geraniums pushed into the dirt, has sprouted a rogue dandelion.

What a thrill, what a shock, to be alive on a morning in June, prosperous, almost scandalously privileged, with a simple errand to run.

Another thing I like about Cunningham is he knows when he’s written enough. He knows when to end things and let the reader’s mind take over. He makes us feel complicit in the writing, as if he’s just putting into words what we’ve always thought and known. We are part of the creative act and he’s the medium through which everything is channeled.

We can live it, experience it, and feel it, but he’s the one who can put it into words. Cunningham connects us through the written word, which is what every aspiring writer wants to do, which is what Virginia Woolf is trying to do when she begins her new novel.

It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty.


Cunningham, Michael. The Hours. Picador; Reissue edition (November 1, 2002) 240 pages. ISBN-10: 0312305060; ISBN-13: 978-0312305062

Views of Bangkok

Movie Review: Pan’s Labyrinth

I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth at the Lido cinema in Bangkok last week. The Lido is an older movie theater that’s small and comfortable, and usually shows “art” films or foreign films that you’ll never see in the many omniplex cinemas around the city. There are usually only about four or five English-language films (read, American blockbusters) being shown during any week in Bangkok, and they can each occupy three screens per theater, depending on the size of the theater.

Pan’s Labyrinth was written and directed by Mexican-born Guillermo del Toro, who also directed Hellboy, one of my favorite comic-book hero movies (thanks mainly to Ron Perlman, who turned Hellboy into a complex, funny guy).

The story of Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in Spain in 1944. According to the bit of history we get with the opening credits, in 1944 there were still guerilla fighters in the hills of Spain who were trying to defeat Franco’s Fascists. The action begins with a military convoy transporting a pregnant woman, Carmen, and her daughter Ofelia through the forest to an old mill that serves as a military base for soldiers who are hunting down the guerillas in a take-no-prisoners (except to torture them) war. The sadistic captain in charge of the operation is Carmen’s second husband and she is carrying his son. Captain Vidal is an obsessive and controlling perfectionist who wants his son to be born near him, and so he has Carmen brought to the mill. She is clearly not well and Vidal insists that she use a wheelchair at all times, even though she protests that it isn’t necessary.

Ofelia is Carmen’s daughter by her first husband, a tailor who was killed during the war. She is an avid reader of fairytales and is deeply immersed in the story of a princess who ran away from her home in the dark netherworld, seeking blue skies and sunshine. Her father, the king, has vowed to wait forever for her return. Ofelia’s narrative thread plunges us into a world of fantasy that runs parallel throughout the film to the brutal reality of the war being waged between the Fascist soldiers and the resistance fighters.

Ofelia accidentally comes upon an ancient labyrinth near the mill while chasing a locust, which, it turns out, is actually a fairy, sent from the magical world beneath the labyrinth. The fairy leads Ofelia to a faun that, as it turns out, only she can see. In order to find out whether she is the lost princess, the faun gives Ofelia three difficult tasks to perform, and tells her she must complete them successfully before the full moon. If she does, she will be returned to her real parents and live in the magical kingdom forever.

Del Toro skillfully intertwines the quest for the missing princess, the war between the army and the anti-Fascists, and the birth of Carmen’s baby, using a handful of characters that connect to each other in both worlds, each as labyrinthine and terrifying as the other. In the fantasy world that Ofelia must navigate all by herself, she must confront a huge, grotesque toad and a hideous creature that eats children. She will ultimately be forced to make a horrifying choice to determine whether or not she is the lost princess.


Del Toro handles the two stories brilliantly, and won a well-deserved Oscar for best foreign film at the Academy Awards this year. There are many heart-stopping moments in both stories and enough twists and turns (forgive the pun) to keep us guessing to the end. Is Ofelia really the lost princess? Will the baby be born alive? Will Carmen survive the birth? Will the rebel informer who lives and works in the mill be caught? Will the vicious and sadistic Captain Vidal get what he deserves? Maybe. Maybe not. And definitely not in the way we expect.

Despite the fact that the central character, Ofelia (wonderfully portrayed by 11-year-old Ivana Baquero), is a child, and despite the magic realism of the fairytale world she inhabits, this is not a film for children. There are images of brutality and acts of cruelty that stay in the mind; I covered my eyes a few times during the torture scenes and could not watch the Captain stitch up his own slashed face.

As a writer, I attempt to bring together the disparate elements of life through character and story. In the best of all possible worlds, this process is seamless and the reader makes discoveries, not because I’ve said, “Know this,” but because I’ve led him or her in the right direction. In Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro has sometimes resorted to black-and-white, good-versus-evil storytelling. The characters tend to be representative and one-dimensional, making their actions predictable. But the artistry in this movie lies in bringing together two narratives from two very different worlds. The luxury of exploring multi-dimensional characters would have required more hours than a filmmaker is allowed and would, in all probability, have reduced the tension that makes this such an effective film.

A good film, in my opinion, is both experiential and thought provoking. But if you have too much time to think during the film, chances are the experience will be watered down. Better to be thinking about the film as you exit the theater; and even better if you’re still thinking about it a week later.

Bangkok

It is impossible to consider these populous modern cities of the East without a certain malaise. They are all alike, with their straight streets, their arcades … their dust, their blinding sun … their dense traffic, their ceaseless din. They have no history and no traditions. Painters have not painted them. No poets, transfiguring dead bricks and mortar with their divine nostalgia, have given them a tremulous melancholy not their own. They live their own lives, without associations, like a man without imagination. They are hard and glittering and as unreal as a backcloth in a musical comedy. They give nothing. But when you leave them it is with a feeling that you have missed something and you cannot help thinking that they have some secret that they have kept from you.

W. Somerset Maugham, The Gentleman in the Parlour, 1930

When I read those words recently I realized that things have not changed that much in these “cities of the East.” Maugham was writing about Bangkok in 1930. A smaller, less populated Bangkok but much the same city in spirit that I first saw in 1976, again in 1981, and then in 2005 when I moved to Thailand.

When you first see Bangkok, you’re overwhelmed by all of it, the noise, the dust, the heat, the traffic. But the eye in 2006 can see no further than Maugham’s eye saw in 1930, so Bangkok at street level remains as confined and compressed to the modern traveler or resident as it was nearly a century ago. The buildings are taller and more numerous, the smells are different – more diesel and less dung – but commerce surrounding and enabling daily living hasn’t changed much.

… if you turn out of the main road you will find yourself in a network of small streets, dark, shaded and squalid, and tortuous alleys paved with cobble stones. In numberless shops, open to the street, with their gay signs, the industrious … ply the various crafts of an Oriental city. Here are druggists and coffin shops, money-changers and tea-houses. Along the streets … coolies lollop swiftly bearing loads and the peddling cook carries his little kitchen to sell you the hot dinner you are too busy to eat at home.

Yes, all that and more: Starbucks, a 7-Eleven on every corner, the Colonel, McDonald’s, even Dunkin’ Donuts (I swear … and swear …). Every sidewalk is lined with vendors in front of the shops, some with tables, carts or portable kitchens, some with just a blanket on the pavement. Selling everything you could possibly want: silver, gold, all things Gucci (some of it real!), t-shirts with rude words and spelling mistakes on them, needles and thread, cell phones, DVDs and CDs, watches, hats, socks, and hair clips.

But the primary commerce in Bangkok, and in Thailand, revolves around food, growing it, selling it, cooking and eating it. In Bangkok you are never more than a few meters from sustenance. There is no excuse for being hungry or thirsty. Food and drink (except wine, alas) are cheap and plentiful. And good. Very, very good. The Thais are fussy about their food and every street vendor is a specialist. You want fried bananas? Smoked fish? Barbecued chicken? Noodle soup? No problem. Fresh fruit? Iced coffee? Pork satay? Deep-fried cockroaches? Right this way.

Okay. I haven’t tried any of the fried insect snack food that people purchase by the bagful. And I haven’t actually seen anybody munching on it in public. I suspect this delicacy is eaten in the privacy of the home, in front of the television set while watching one of the ubiquitous girl-meets-boy-boy-breaks-girl’s-heart-girl-meets-new-boy-who-punches-out-first-boy’s-lights soap operas.

Girls. Hmmm. And the hapless foreigners who try to win their love. So much has already been written about them, let’s talk about beer instead. The beer in Thailand is very good. And cheap. And cold. They like to serve it with ice (duh! isn’t ice, like, water?) I’ve become a beer drinker in Bangkok, after years of preferring wine, red and heavy. Why? Beer is good here, and cheap and cold. Wine is not so good here, expensive and warm. I’m still trying to break through the psychological barrier that will allow me to accept paying $15 for a bottle of basic vin de table when I can pay 85 cents for a bottle of beer that gives me a buzz and also quenches my thirst – wine not being a great thirst quencher but, alas, a wonderful, sensuous pleasure that I miss.

What else do I miss? Not much. Let’s see … do I miss cold weather and snow? No. Do I miss making mortgage and car payments and paying exorbitantly high taxes? No. Do I miss my friends? Yes, but not as much as I thought I would. I can e-mail ’em and Skype ’em or call them on my mobile, just like before. It’s not like the old days when you waited three weeks for a letter to arrive at American Express. And I’m lucky. I’m one of those people who carries my nearest and dearest with me wherever I go. Every cell in my body retains memory (and water, too, alas. It’s very humid here. But luckily, beer is a diuretic.).

Do I miss drinking wine with my friends? Yes, I do.

More, later.

Writer's Blog

Welcome to my writer’s blog. I’m going to be posting my thoughts and ideas about a lot of things, from living and traveling in Asia, to writing novels and trying to stay alive in the world of publishing. I’ll also tell you about the books I’m reading and the movies I’m watching and anything else that pops into my head. This is a whole new world for me, so I hope you’ll be patient and send me your questions and suggestions.