Michael Cunningham adopted intertextuality as a structural principle in his fiction, in that (= nel senso che) it is a text that connects the lives of three female characters having apparently no relation.ship.

It is Cunningham's game-like attitude to the structure of the novel that becomes of interest for the intelligent reader because he/she understands that in a de-centred world the only connection is provided by a text which becomes the survival island for a series of characters; thus it provides a superb example of the idea of a multifaceted identity never totally grasped by the some characters and the reader as well.

Postmodernism finds in The Hours its realisation: differently from a Modernism attitude where characters are generally puruing a quest to find balance or a form of order that might give them a reason for living, according to a metaphysical principle, M. Cunningham's characters (male and female all the same)  can only display their different aspects whereas their identity is only provided by the mirror image returned by their interlocutor/interlocutors.

There exists no unique essence or finite soul and that is why The Hours is an appropriate title.

It reminds fragmentation, a dissociation of sensibility where the different identities of one character come into focus according to context and content: the content of their interactions . It follows that the intelligent reader can identify with the essence he or she feels closer to.

There is no protagonist if not the text which stands in the middle of the discourses their life is made of.
It goes without saying that M. Cunningham's novel might be considered the celebration of textuality: a cross section and  network of discourses where it is the reader's task to find a possible director.