Dubliners

by

paperback, 224 pages

English language

Published June 15, 2019 by Arcturus Publishing, Arcturus.

ISBN:
9781789500837
OCLC Number:
1055679118

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

On the bleak streets of Dublin, a young boy grieves over the death of an irregular priest, a woman elopes with her lover, and a professor considers the nature of death: these are some of the unfortunate denizens of James Joyce's imagination.

Gracefully written and born of deeply personal experiences, the stories in this collection are often bleak and troubling. Together they provide an unflinching portrait of the city, as Joyce lays out the brutal realities of Irish life on the eve of independence.

A controversial and genre-defying depiction of the everyday, Dubliners is an essential read from one of Ireland's most celebrated literary figures. --back cover

25 editions

reviewed Dubliners James Joyce 1914 by James Joyce

Much more interesting than I expected

4 stars

If you've been avoiding Joyce because of Ulysses, this book feels like a warm-up both for the reader and the author. There are beautiful phrases buried inside intriguing vignettes. Yes, the political and social commentary is there (and opaque for those of us without knowledge of the time period and history), but the stories are enjoyable independent of those allusions. (Except for Two Gallants. I felt like that one went right over my head, but I also noted the excessive walking similar to Ulysses.) I found a lot of pain in these stories, but I was also struck by the deep sense of community and family. Most of these "stories" don't have an ending as we think of story structure, but are open to interpretation and thought. Reminded me a bit of all those lessons in high school about the Lady and the Tiger by Stockton.