how a person's whole life can be examined through the prism of one single day. Cunningham took the novel's title, The Hours, from the original working title that Virginia Woolf used for Mrs Dalloway. Plot summary This summary does not contain the whole book. The stream-of-consciousness style being so prominent in this work, a summary of the plot based on physical action does not give a thorough understanding of the content of the work. In the novel, action occurring in the physical world (i.e. characters doing things, such as talking, walking, etc.) is far outweighed by material existing in the thought and memory of the protagonists. Prologue In 1941, Virginia Woolf commits suicide by drowning herself in the Ouse, a river in Sussex, England. Even as she is drowning, Virginia marvels at everyday sights and sounds. Leonard Woolf, her husband, finds her suicide note, and Virginia's dead body floats downstream where life, in the form of a mother and child going for a walk, goes on as if Virginia is still taking in all the sights and sounds. "I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been." —from Virginia Woolf's suicide note to Leonard Woolf. p. 7, 1999, 4th Estate paperback edition. Mrs. Dalloway The novel jumps to New York City at the end of the 20th century where Clarissa Vaughan (Cunningham's modern Mrs Dalloway), announcing she will buy the flowers for a party she's hosting later in the day, paraphrases the opening sentence of Woolf's novel. She leaves her partner Sally cleaning their apartment and heads outside on a June morning. Walking to the flower shop, Clarissa enjoys the everyday hustle and bustle of the city. The sights and sounds she encounters serve as jumping-off points for her thoughts about life, what she loves, and her past. The beautiful day reminds her of a happy memory, a holiday she had as a young woman with two friends, Richard and Louis. The flowers are for a party Clarissa is hosting at her apartment that night for Richard (now a renowned poet dying of AIDS) as he has just won the Carrouthers, an esteemed poetry prize awarded for a life's work. Clarissa bumps into Walter, an acquaintance who writes gay pulp fiction romances. Clarissa invites him to the party although she knows Richard abhors Walter's shallow interests in "fame and fashions, the latest restaurant". Clarissa herself appreciates