31. Here’s what I thought about The Hours, by Michael Cunningham:
Really, it was fairly dull. I found it hard work for the first few chapters, but as you all know, I never ever give up [unless it’s some awful book set in Aberystwyth], because there’s always a chance that the story will somehow redeem itself. Frankly, The Hours never does pay its debt to the persistent reader.
The reviewer is probably supposed to refer to the profound and wistful atmosphere, but who cares? I mean, really, what about it? Sometimes books that are supposed to be deep and clever are just too damn contrived to work, and this is one of them. Meh. Intellectual blah. If this book was a person, it would be reclining on a sofa with a pale hand to its brow, and I would be wishing it would take a paracetamol and stop whining.
It ends in what might be intended to be a twist, but was in fact an unremarkable effort to tie up some ends that weren’t particularly loose anyway.
There you go: Karen reads the books so that you don’t have to.
3/5