The Hours

Since I just read Orlando, I thought I would read this book about Virginia Woolf and the stories of two other women: Carissa (who is like a modern-day Mrs. Dalloway - a book I read years ago), and Laura (a LA suburban housewife of the 60s - the place and era in which I grew up). 

It is written so well. It is sad, but it is so beautiful at the same time. 

I even found the movie on Freevee TV. The acting is perfect. Beautifully done and the role that won Nicole Kidman her Oscar. 

Here is why James Mustich thinks it should be one of the 1000 Books You Read Before You Die:

Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, set on a single June day in London, is punctuated by the tolling of Big Ben, the bell inside the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. Its regular marking of the time—“First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable”—reminds Clarissa Dalloway of both the day’s passage and the evanescence of all things. This indelible symbol provided Woolf’s novel with its working title: The Hours. Seven decades on, Michael Cunningham, a writer of uncommon sensitivity and an unabashed Woolf lover, retrieved it for his best novel, a stunning invocation of Mrs. Dalloway and a masterful fiction in its own right. The Hours (1998) is a book that leaves the reader feeling hopeful and blessed, suffused with the ever-present, ineffable wonder of life. Really.