The Hours

So far my feelings on this book have been rather neutral. I've enjoyed some parts and I've hated a few others. The parts about Virginia leave me feeling as if she is a fictional character, and not a real person at all. At the same time the Dalloway parts mirror Woolf's Dalloway so much that I find myself not really enjoying reading them, as I feel it's a total repetition with different names and different settings. As for the Laura Brown parts, these parts often leave me feeling empty-headed and distracted and I feel that though there are some interesting facts and happenings in these sections of the book, I do feel that they detract from the story as a whole. However, this book is incredibly easy to read and I have not had any problems completing the assignments, and I do often find myself reading ahead. Something else that makes this book easier to read is that Cunningham's language is much simpler than Virginia's and it seems the messages he wants to carry through are easier to recognize and interpret than Virginia's were. The book as a whole doesn't really seem as audacious in its depiction of Virginia's life, mainly because when I get as deep into the book as I often do when I read I forget that she does have a real life, and that she is instead a fictional character and that Cunningham could do whatever he pleases to her because her life is subject to his depictions. Overall these feelings have left me with a fairly neutral perspective on the book. I haven't really enjoyed that much of it. But at the same time I don't find it much of a problem to read. I believe that I will finish this book fairly quickly and that after finishing it, though I will still retain some of the words and scenes from it, it will likely slip quickly from my mind.