Imagining Woolf.

The Hours * Michael Cunningham * Farrar, Straus, and Giroux * $22

I have a very low tolerance for arty writers who publish stories in The New Yorker and then write novels that turn out to be homages to Virginia Woolf, which makes my reaction to Michael Cunningham's new novel, The Hours, all the more remarkable. Suddenly I get it. I see things I've never seen before. Reading this book, I was overwhelmed by the possibilities of art.

Well, maybe I am exaggerating a bit, but not much. Like most works of genius, The Hours is simplicity itself, with a hint of mystery. It begins with an account of the last day in the life of Woolf--you may remember that she committed suicide by drowning herself near her home in 1941, her coat weighted down by a large stone--and from there goes on to enter the lives of two other women.

Clarissa is a Greenwich Village bohemian who is preparing a party for her best friend, a famous poet dying of AIDS-related complications. She is an admirable character, privileged and secure, with a partner of 18 years (Sally) and a teenage daughter she's having problems with. The second woman, Laura, is a California housewife in 1949. Her marriage is becoming more and more empty, and her young son, Richie, unsettles her with his intelligence and insight. What do this strange trio have in common? And how will this odd situation resolve itself?

The Hours was the working title Woolf used for the novel that became Mrs. Dalloway. In it she perfected the painterly technique of describing the many tiny acts and images of daily life that add up to so much more. Cunningham seizes this technique and adds some refinements of his own. On one hand, not much happens. Cakes are baked. Meryl Streep--or is it Vanessa Redgrave?--pokes her head out the door of a trailer on a movie set. A great deal of time is spent buying and arranging flowers. But on the other hand, everything happens. People fall in love, fall out of love, go mad, and die.

I've never been a Woolf devotee until now, and I see that the problem was that nobody had ever explained her properly. Cunningham has opened my eyes to her genius--her intensity (she literally worked herself to death), her passion (her most thrilling amours were outside the bounds of society), and her madness (whose onset was signaled by terrifying headaches and voices). Do you have to be a Woolf fan to appreciate this book? Absolutely not, although I guarantee you will become one if you read it.

You will also become a Cunningham fan. He is that rarest of writers, combining intellectual and emotional depth with an astonishing command of technique. The Hours is one of the best books I've read in years, profoundly sad, perhaps, but always exhilarating. And best of all, it's a real book. It could never, ever be a movie.

Plunket is the author of My Search for Warren Harding and Love Junkie.