THE HOURS―めぐりあう時間たち 三人のダロウェイ夫人 [単行本]

   ピューリッツァー賞受賞作品が、メリル・ストリープ、ジュリアン・ムーア、ニコール・キッドマン出演、スティーブン・ダルドリー監督、デヴィッド・ヘア脚本で映画化された。

 『The Hours』は、3人の女性の物語。1923年、ロンドン郊外で夫と療養中のヴァージニア・ウルフは、『ダロウェイ夫人』の執筆を始めていた。1949年、ロサンゼルス郊外で、完璧な家庭に息が詰まりそうになっていた主婦ローラ・ブラウンが、『ダロウェイ夫人』に衝撃を受け、人生を変えたいと思い始めていた。そして、現代のニューヨークでは、クラリッサ・ヴォーンが、エイズに犯された詩人の恋人のためにパーティを開こうとしていた…。

   物語の終焉で、この3つの物語は見事に絡み合い、ひとつになる。その繊細で美しいエンディングは、いつまでも心に残るだろう。 --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

V・ウルフの『ダロウェイ夫人』をめぐる三人の物語は、時を超えて運命的にからみあい、予想もつかぬ結末へと…。ピューリッツァ賞＆PEN／フォークナー賞受賞。全米ベストセラー1位。映画原作。

人生は謎。時を超えてめぐりあう三人のダロウェイ夫人。六月のある美しい朝。三人の女の特別の一日が始まる…ヴァージニア―ロンドン郊外。1923年。文学史上の傑作『ダロウェイ夫人』を書き始めようとする…ローラー―ロサンジェルス。1949年。『ダロウェイ夫人』を愛読する主婦。夫の誕生パーティを計画し、息子とケーキを作り始める…クラリッサ―ニューヨーク。20世紀の終わり。『ダロウェイ夫人』と同じ名ゆえに元恋人リチャードにミセス・ダロウェイと呼ばれる編集者。文学賞を取った彼のためにパーティを開こうと、花を買いに行く…異なる時代を生きる三人の「時間」はいつしか運命的に絡み合い、奔流のように予想もつかぬ結末へ…。ピュリッツァ賞&PEN/フォークナー賞受賞。本年度アカデミー賞受賞、映画「めぐりあう時間たち」原作。

時を超えてめぐりあう三人のダロウェイ夫人。異なる時代を生きる三人の「時間」はいつしか運命的に絡み合い、本流のように予想もつかぬ結末へ…。同名映画の原作。ピュリッツア賞、ペン/フォークナー賞受賞作品。

The Hours is both an hommage to Virginia Woolf and very much its own creature. Even as Michael Cunningham brings his literary idol back to life, he intertwines her story with those of two more contemporary women. One gray suburban London morning in 1923, Woolf awakens from a dream that will soon lead to Mrs. Dalloway. In the present, on a beautiful June day in Greenwich Village, 52-year-old Clarissa Vaughan is planning a party for her oldest love, a poet dying of AIDS. And in Los Angeles in 1949, Laura Brown, pregnant and unsettled, does her best to prepare for her husband's birthday, but can't seem to stop reading Woolf. These women's lives are linked both by the 1925 novel and by the few precious moments of possibility each keeps returning to. Clarissa is to eventually realize:

There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined.... Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

As Cunningham moves between the three women, his transitions are seamless. One early chapter ends with Woolf picking up her pen and composing her first sentence, "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself." The next begins with Laura rejoicing over that line and the fictional universe she is about to enter. Clarissa's day, on the other hand, is a mirror of Mrs. Dalloway's--with, however, an appropriate degree of modern beveling as Cunningham updates and elaborates his source of inspiration. Clarissa knows that her desire to give her friend the perfect party may seem trivial to many. Yet it seems better to her than shutting down in the face of disaster and despair. Like its literary inspiration, The Hours is a hymn to consciousness and the beauties and losses it perceives. It is also a reminder that, as Cunningham again and again makes us realize, art belongs to far more than just "the world of objects." --Kerry Fried
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At first blush, the structural and thematic conceits of this novel--three interwoven novellas in varying degrees connected to Virginia Woolf--seem like the stuff of a graduate student's pipe dream: a great idea in the dorm room that betrays a lack of originality. But as soon as one dips into Cunningham's prologue, in which Woolf's suicide is rendered with a precise yet harrowing matter-of-factness ("She hurries from the house, wearing a coat too heavy for the weather. It is 1941. She has left a note for Leonard, and another for Vanessa."), the reader becomes completely entranced. This book more than fulfills the promise of Cunningham's 1990 debut, A Home at the End of the World, while showing that sweep does not necessarily require the sprawl of his second book, Flesh and Blood. In alternating chapters, the three stories unfold: "Mrs. Woolf," about Virginia's own struggle to find an opening for Mrs. Dalloway in 1923; "Mrs. Brown," about one Laura Brown's efforts to escape, somehow, an airless marriage in California in 1949 while, coincidentally, reading Mrs. Dalloway; and "Mrs. Dalloway," which is set in 1990s Greenwich Village and concerns Clarissa Vaughan's preparations for a party for her gay--and dying--friend, Richard, who has nicknamed her Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham's insightful use of the historical record concerning Woolf in her household outside London in the 1920s is matched by his audacious imagining of her inner lifeand his equally impressive plunges into the lives of Laura and Clarissa. The book would have been altogether absorbing had it been linked only thematically. However, Cunningham cleverly manages to pull the stories even more intimately togther in the closing pages. Along the way, rich and beautifully nuanced scenes follow one upon the other: Virginia, tired and weak, irked by the early arrival of headstrong sister Vanessa, her three children and the dead bird they bury in the backyard; Laura's afternoon escape to an L.A. hotel to read for a few hours; Clarissa's anguished witnessing of her friend's suicidal jump down an airshaft, rendered with unforgettable detail. The overall effect of this book is twofold. First, it makes a reader hunger to know all about Woolf, again; readers may be spooked at times, as Woolf's spirit emerges in unexpected ways, but hers is an abiding presence, more about living than dying. Second, and this is the gargantuan accomplishment of this small book, it makes a reader believe in the possibility and depth of a communality based on great literature, literature that has shown people how to live and what to ask of life. (Nov.) FYI: The Hours was a working title that Woolf for a time gave to Mrs. Dalloway.
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare

The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

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4 1.5-hour cassettes
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Michael Cunningham was raised in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World (Picador) and Flesh and Blood. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories, and he is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award. The Hours was a New York Times Bestseller, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1998 by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly.

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カニンガム,マイケル
現代アメリカの実力派作家。1952年、オハイオ州シンシナティに生まれ、パサデナで育つ。スタンフォード大学で英文学を専攻し、アイオワ大学で修士号を取得。『この世の果ての家』(90)、Flesh and Blood(95)、ヴァージニア・ウルフの『ダロウェイ夫人』に想を得た本書『めぐりあう時間たち』(98)は、すでに文学史上の傑作との評を得てピュリッツア賞とペン/フォークナー賞を受賞し、発表以来ベストセラーリスト1位を続けるミリオンセラーとなる。2002年映画化され話題を呼ぶ

高橋 和久
1950年生。英文学専攻。東京大学文学部教授。京都大学文学部卒業(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)