{"product_id":"the-hours-by-michael-cunningham","title":"'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"36\" data-end=\"604\"\u003eAcross three separate timelines, Cunningham follows the lives of women connected—directly and indirectly—to \u003cem data-start=\"144\" data-end=\"158\"\u003eMrs Dalloway\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"36\" data-end=\"604\"\u003eIn 1920s England, Virginia Woolf begins writing the novel while navigating the constraints of illness and domestic life. Decades later in Los Angeles, a housewife reads it and finds her own life quietly destabilised. In 1990s New York, Clarissa Vaughan moves through a single day preparing for a party, her routines echoing and refracting Woolf’s original structure. The stories unfold in parallel, touching without melting into one another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"606\" data-end=\"1141\"\u003eThe novel moves with a measured, interior rhythm, attentive to small gestures and shifts in perception. Cunningham borrows Woolf’s temporal compression—events contained within the span of a day—but opens it outward, allowing each narrative to hold its own weight. There’s a careful balance between homage and reworking: the text acknowledges its source without becoming subordinate to it. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1143\" data-end=\"1578\"\u003ePublished in 1998, \u003cem data-start=\"1162\" data-end=\"1173\"\u003eThe Hours\u003c\/em\u003e sits within a late-20th-century return to modernist form, re-engaging Woolf’s techniques through a contemporary lens. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the PEN\/Faulkner Award, and later reached a wider audience through its film adaptation. What remains most intact across versions is the novel’s attention to interiority—it's mesmerising really.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1143\" data-end=\"1578\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePaperback, Fourth Estate (1999). Good condition—some creasing and light wear to covers, pages clean and binding sound.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44524559925331,"sku":null,"price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext_6.png?v=1776992986","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/the-hours-by-michael-cunningham","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}