The apartment has, more than anything, an underwater aspect. Clarissa walks through it as she would negotiate the hold of a sunken ship. It would not be entirely surprising if a small school of silver fish darted by in the half-light. These rooms do not seem, in any serious way, to be part of the building in which they happen to occur, and when Clarissa enters and closes behind her the big, creaky door with the four locks (two of them broken ) she feels, always, as if she has passed through a dimensional warp — through the looking glass, as it were; as if the lobby, stairwell, and hallway exist in another realm altogether; another time.

Michael Cunningham, "Hours" (1998)