A woman in her late 50s plans a party for her dying friend in the 1990s, a housewife obsesses over her perfect suburban life in the 1950s, and Virginia Woolf begins her masterpiece, Mrs. Dalloway, in the 1920s.

Three women in three different periods of history share the same experiences and intertwined fates in The Hours by Michael Cunningham.

The Hours begins with the haunting suicide of a tortured Woolf. It is a resonating image that stays with you throughout the book. Woolf becomes a ghost haunting every scene, even the scenes of her own life.

Cunningham chooses seemingly different women and works them together until the three women become one defining character with different names and lives but with the same soul.

The book flows seamlessly from one character to another in a stream of consciousness style that elegantly ties the plots together. Every chapter and every scene is part of another.

Not only does Cunningham beautifully portray the life and soul of Woolf, he also describes the life of three women. It amazes me that a man could write so prolifically about the thoughts and feelings of women as well as a renowned feminist such as Woolf.

But Cunningham's book is not just a book about three women. It is a book about the lives and fates of all people.

In explaining the title, Cunningham cites an excerpt from the diary of Woolf. She said that she digs out caves behind all her characters, giving them depth and humanity until they eventually connect and surface to the present day. The Hours is the story of Woolf's characters that have finally surfaced.

— Reviewed by Parveen Shamsi