Dubliners

By James Joyce and John Boyne

Dubliners is a wonderfully engaging and accessible collection of stories by James Joyce, an author famed for being difficult to read. It contains fifteen stories, among them The Dead, made into a memorable film by John Huston. This beautiful new edition, with an introduction by John Boyne, was chosen as the One Book, One City title for Dublin in 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The O'Brien Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781847175236

James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and poet. A contributor to the modernist avant-garde movement, he is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the twentieth century and is best known for Ulysses (1922), a novel that parallels Homer's Odyssey using an array of literary styles.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

by John Boyne

My first encounter with Dubliners came when I was fifteen years old.

My older sister was leaving home to take up a place at an English university and I wanted to give her a present before she went. I wandered into a bookshop close to my school in Terenure during lunch break – not the type of school or area depicted in any of Joyce’s stories – and the book caught my eye. I have it on my desk now as I write this, that same edition, slightly torn, with yellowed edges, the date ‘1986’ inscribed on the title page. The drawing on the front shows a young woman looking up nervously as an enormous feather flies towards her; I have no idea what this is supposed to signify or why the feather is bigger than her head. In the background appears to be the General Post Office, although the Liffey is flowing directly in front of it, which doesn’t make a lot of sense either. But at fifteen, questions like that would never have entered my mind and I chose the book simply because I thought it would remind her of home.

It makes me wonder – how many emigrants over the years have put a paperback copy of Dubliners in their bags before heading to the airport, the docks or the ferry terminals as they made their way to England, America or Australia as a reminder of the city of their birth, a city from which they have found themselves exiled through economic necessity? How many of them are doing it again now?

Before giving my sister the book, however, I began to glance through it, wondering whether I should have a go at it myself even though I was half convinced that it would bore the pants off me. We had a copy of Ulysses in our school library and I had spent an afternoon a few months before navigating the tense waters between Buck Mulligan, Stephen Dedalus and the student Haines as they made their way along the shore in front of Sandycove’s Martello Tower and, although I had stuck with the opening section, the prospect of another 700 pages had filled me with dread. (Again, I was fifteen; I’d only recently traded in Adrian Mole for Holden Caulfield so the meanderings of stately, plump Anyone around my own city were nowhere near as interesting as the wanderings of the catcher in the rye around the streets of Manhattan, picking up girls and saying dirty words.) But Dubliners, I had to admit, looked a lot easier. It was shorter for one thing, less intimidating. I picked a story at random, ‘Two Gallants’, a tale of a couple of bowsies, Corley and Lenehan, who have a terrible attitude towards women, seducing them, stringing them along and then finally swindling one out of a gold coin. I thought they seemed like great fellows altogether. Except I wasn’t quite sure what had happened at the end and so I read it again, this time feeling a little less comfortable with their obvious misogyny and cruel natures.

Still, the story made an impression on me and I wondered whether there might be something in this Joyce fellow after all. I turned back to the beginning, to ‘The Sisters’, and began to read.

I didn’t encounter Dubliners again until university. I was studying English at Trinity College and, unlike my Terenure days, the streets around College Green, running north across the river onto Parnell Square, past the Garden of Remembrance and onto Dorset Street, brought the world of Joyce alive to me as these were streets that I was walking along every day, streets that were familiar to me and to which I felt an intimate and personal connection. My interest in literature was fully developing by now and I thought it was quite something to be a Dubliner, with a father from the city centre – from Boyne Street, no less – and a literary heritage that was the match of any city in the world.

Reading Dubliners then made me realise something that I had never quite understood before about the short story: that a collection did not have to be a random assortment of disparate fictions gathered together and bound between covers to make a book, but that a writer could and should make connections between the stories, links between the characters, that each would have their place in the greater work and be set there for a reason. I thought of it like a concept album. But then, I was in university at the time so this was the frame of reference I was working in.

Returning to it now as an adult it strikes me how economical Joyce is with language. We still think of Ulysses as a long work filled with classical allusion and historical reference points, but most of the stories in Dubliners are only a few thousand words at most and remain firmly inside their own milieu and yet they linger in the mind and invite re-reading time and again to understand the minds and decipher the intentions of their protagonists. The complexity of thought in ‘The Boarding House’ for example would merit an academic study longer than the story itself. How long has Mrs Mooney known of the relationship between her tenant and her daughter? What has happened to Doran to make him think so contemptuously of his paramour’s station in life? What on earth is Polly actually up to with her mood swings?

Joyce manages to presage themes that would, almost a century later, be common refrains in Irish literature. Reading ‘An Encounter’, it’s hard to imagine a more subtle exploration of potential child abuse than the one that appears in the meeting between the old man and the two boys.

‘I say! Look what he’s doing!’ exclaims the boy Mahony when the old man stands up and steps away from them for a few moments. And what is he doing? Everything is inferred, everything is suggestion, no explanations are needed.

The collection separates itself into three parts exploring the lives of children, the middle-aged and the elderly. It begins with a child contemplating the death of a priest who has had a formative influence on him, a death that he cannot fully comprehend when the whole of life seems open before him now, an endless adventure. There is first love in ‘Araby’, a moving story of a boy’s desperate desire to purchase the right gift from a bazaar for the girl he likes and his pained inability to do so. There is lost love too, only a story later, in ‘Eveline’. By the centre of the collection we encounter the frustrations of middle-age; Farrington’s gradual loss of temper in ‘Counterparts’, his loss of masculinity in the arm-wrestling contest, Mrs Sinico’s loneliness in ‘A Painful Case’, Mrs Kearney’s attempt to re-live her youth vicariously through her daughter in ‘A Mother’. And then, finally, the collection draws to a close with the masterpiece ‘The Dead’.

For the young reader coming to Joyce for the first time, Dubliners is certainly the place to start. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are books that you have to build yourself up for but Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are different kettles of fish altogether, as Joyce himself might have put it. There’s a very pure engagement with storytelling in these fifteen stories, the narratives are to the fore even if it takes the reader a little time to mine down towards the meaning below the surface. The language makes one smile and feel a little unsettled at the same time, such as when the old man in ‘An Encounter’ remarks that what a boy wants is a nice warm whipping. And there are still words that, even now, I need to look up in a dictionary as I have no idea what they mean (simoniac, sedulously, bostoons, amongst others), although perhaps this says more about me than it does about the author.

The ‘One City, One Book’ concept, employed in various cities around the world, is a wonderful way to get an entire community engaged in reading, talking about books and sharing their opinions. It’s the biggest book club you can join and there’s no limit on the number of available places. In past years, Dubliners have engaged with classic fiction by Flann O’Brien, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, whose books have illuminated the city through humour, fantasy, horror and mythology. We’ve opened ourselves to new novels by Sebastian Barry and Joseph O’Connor, who have examined the plight of Dublin soldiers in the First World War and an actress recalling her experience during the cultural revolution instigated by Synge, Lady Gregory and Yeats.

But it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate book for ‘One City One Book’, 2012 than Dubliners. It’s interested in all of us, rich and poor, old and young, men and women. It’s filled with humour and love, pain and loss, and which of our lives do not contain elements of each of these? Above all, it rings out with a love of these streets, of the voices of the people who inhabit them, their wit, their style, their optimism even as the world collapses around them.

Dubliners might have been inspired by the city that gave the collection its name but the city itself, this one city with this one book, continues to be defined by the stories we write about it.

THE SISTERS

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world, and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout¹ he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:

No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly… but there was something queer… there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion…

He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.

I have my own theory about it, he said. I think it was one of those… peculiar cases…. But it’s hard to say…

He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me:

Well, so your old friend is gone, you’ll be sorry to hear.

Who? said I.

Father Flynn.

Is he dead?

Mr. Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.

I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.

The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.

God have mercy on his soul, said my aunt piously.

Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate.

I wouldn’t like children of mine, he said, to have too much to say to a man like that.

How do you mean, Mr. Cotter? asked my aunt.

What I mean is, said old Cotter, it’s bad for children. My idea is: let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and not be… Am I right, Jack?

That’s my principle, too, said my uncle. "Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian² there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large. … Mr. Cotter might take a pick of that leg of mutton," he added to my aunt.

No, no, not for me, said old Cotter.

My aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table.

But why do you think it’s not good for children, Mr. Cotter? she asked.

It’s bad for children, said old Cotter, because their minds are so impressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it has an effect…

I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!

It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It murmured, and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.

The next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little house in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered under the vague name of Drapery. The drapery consisted mainly of children’s bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to hang in the window, saying: Umbrellas Re-covered. No notice was visible now for the shutters were up. A crape³ bouquet was tied to the door-knocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were reading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:

July 1st, 1895

The Revd. James Flynn

(formerly of S. Catherine’s Church, Meath Street),

aged sixty-five years. R. I. P.

The reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was disturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in his armchair by the fire, nearly smothered in his greatcoat. Perhaps my aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this present would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I who emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled too much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about the floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose little clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of his coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.

I wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I walked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the theatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting difficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain circumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or only imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Directory and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all these intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no answer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to smile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the mass which he had made me learn by heart; and, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip – a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.

As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were strange – in Persia, I thought… But I could not remember the end of the dream.

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning. It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie received us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have shouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman pointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt’s nodding, proceeded to toil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely above the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped and beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the dead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated to enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.

I went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like pale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we three knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I could not gather my thoughts because the old woman’s mutterings distracted me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back and how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side. The fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin.

But no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room – the flowers.

We crossed ourselves and came away. In the little

Reviews for Dubliners

[castlelass · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Compilation of fifteen short stories set in early 1900s Dublin. The stories are vignettes of life. As with most short story collections, I liked some more than others, but they are all high quality. My favorites are A Painful Case, A Mother, and The Dead. The tone is quiet and melancholy. The writing is superb. I listened to the audio book, read masterfully by Jim Norton. The audio includes snippets of music recordings of the era, which added to the atmosphere.

[tjsjohanna_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two things that struck me about these short stories. One, the writing is so vivid. Mr. Joyce focuses a tight lens on the details - and everything comes alive. Two, these stories are less stories in the sense of narrative than stories in the sense of catching a glimpse of a life - like looking through a window at a moment or two in an on-going story. The trick in this is that the window catches just that moment that tells the whole story.

[ghost_boy-691444 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Having read Ulysses and really enjoying that one, I wanted to like the Dubliners, but I was a little disappointed. The main issue I had was I really only like the well known stories collected in this book, with "The Dead" being my favorite. The rest of the stories seemed a little dry compared to Ulysses. I understand this book came before and this also connects with Ulysses. I'm hoping Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a little better.

I should note I still like Joyce's writing style. He a little different and challenging for some, but I still like him. I would say this book was a lot easier than Ulysses, but Ulysses had more excitement and life to it I think.

I should also note that even though the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition is over 300 pages long, the book it's self is about pages. That about 100 pages of notes and appendixes for those who need help understanding what Joyce is talking about.

I like James Joyce, but I wouldn't recommend him to anyone unless you know what you're getting yourself into. Joyce isn't a fan of quotation marks, so it's hard to follow who or when someone is talking.

[sriddell_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The stories are all very well-written. But I found the overall whole to be depressing.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reason Read: Books from European Capitals, Dublin, ROOTThis is a work of short stories, published in 1914. They are stories of ordinary people living in Dublin. I've read several other James Joyce including Ulysses and finally got this one read which has been on my shelf since 2016. Many of his characters from this book appear in Ulysses. Glad I've read it and it would have been nice to read it alongside Ulysses though I doubt that I take that on again. But...maybe

[pgchuis · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read (most of) these short stories for my OU course. This particular edition has an absurd number of 'helpful' footnotes, which I gradually learnt to ignore unless I was really struggling with the meaning. I came to this collection with the idea that Joyce was difficult to read, but these were not that difficult really, other than one about an election, which I gave up on.I can see that they are good, but I didn't particularly enjoy them and the mood was so depressing throughout.

[stillatim · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In a traitorous reversal of my usual approach, I give this edition of Dubliners five stars, and the stories themselves two. Jeri Johnson has produced more or less an academic edition at an outrageously cheap price; her introduction is excellent--providing background to the writing and publishing of the work, and solid readings of a few stories; her notes are *extremely* extensive (to the point that she annotates words I'm pretty sure I knew in middle school). So, excellent job there.

On the other hand, I couldn't help feeling that this edition was a distant descendent of The Dunciad. Not only because so much effort had been put into annotating words that more or less anyone reading this book should know, but because there seemed to be little point to the process of annotation. Sure, I appreciate being told that all of the landmarks and streets and shops are 'real,' and that occasionally they have some meaning that would otherwise have escaped me. But even with that meaning in my mind, very few of these stories are at all gripping. Without the stylistic hijinks of Ulysses, you're left with the bare fact that Joyce has no imagination, no ability to create plot, and not much of a mind for ideas. That doesn't matter when you're writing Ulysses. It matters a great deal when you're asking me to trawl through nearly 200 pages of dull, romanticized anecdotes about how x loves y but y betrays her; how w, x, y and z sit around drinking; and how people sometimes drive fast cars.

In short, most of these pieces are dreadfully boring, at all levels of boredom: stylistically tepid, intellectually dull*, emotionally uninteresting.**

There are, of course, exceptions. The Dead is fine. Eveline is fine melodrama. The Sisters towers above the rest of the collection. But at the end of the day, why would you read these things when you could read Henry James stories, which are better written, more intelligent, and not so obviously transcriptions of something that, you know, happened to me the other day on my way to the Liffey?

If this book had been written by, say, James Giffon, not only would it not get the hundred pages of notation treatment. It wouldn't even be in print.

*: the annotation tries to persuade you that these stories are not dull, and that Joyce is very cunningly using references to Dublin landmarks to place his characters. No doubt that seems very impressive when you don't know the landmarks, but consider that this is the early 20th century equivalent of putting your character in Toms and having her carry a Coach purse. It's not interesting in the slightest.
**: I recognize that it was very hard for Joyce to publish a book with the word 'bloody' in it, and that he took a risk writing a story involving a kiddy fiddler, and so on. These facts should be noted by historians of censorship; they are not reasons for reading the stories.

[geoffsc-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have finally got round to reading this classic.
I loved his concise descriptive language.
His characters were alive and believable.
But I don't think I'm ready to tackle Ulysses yet!

[varielle_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I once got robbed in Dublin. It doesn't seem that much has changed. This is the first Joyce that I successfully slogged through. Bleak. Despairing. Half the characters are drunk and beating their families and the other half are wallowing in misery. Not recommended unless you are suicidally depressed and are looking for something to push you over the edge.

[larryking1-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sure, this collection was written by none other than James Joyce, but let's be perfectly honest: this book encapsulates what Thoreu was talking about when he stated the obvious: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." After finishing this collection of failed lives, broken dreams, religious superstition, alcoholic excess, harsh memories, heartbreak, double-dealing, etc, I am going to need lots of ice cream to cleanse my palate of from the taste of a 'why even bother' mentality. And to think that my Irish grandmother was living in these very streets as this book was written! No wonder she left! Despair at its most relentless; as one character notes, "I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." And he was one of the lucky ones!

[currerbell-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A reread of Dubliners, which I haven't read in half a century. A first read of the Norton Critical Edition with its supplementary materials. Dubliners could get 5***** on its own, but the supplementary materials in this NCE are absolutely superb, even better than the usually excellent NCE material. Especially good were Howard Ehrlich's " 'Araby' in Context: The 'Splendid Bazaar,' Irish Orientalism, and James Clarence Mangan" and Victor Cheng's "Empire and Patriarchy in 'The Dead'."

[nmele_4 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I hadn't read Joyce's collection of short stories in years when I opened this paperback and began. I had forgotten how swiftly he renders his characters and how details he describes help define the characters and the movement in his stories. This collection stands the test of time and ha for a century.

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lovely collection of stories about Dublin.

[vinjii-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dubliners was my attempt to get into Joyce's work. I'd like to read Ulysses one day, but so far I haven't quite dared to tackle it. This is a collection of short stories that I hoped would gently introduce me to Joyce's writing. The stories are easy to understand and I enjoyed the prose. I'm definitely keeping his other work on my tbr list and would recommend Dubliners to anyone who wants a taste of James Joyce.

[alisony-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes there's a time not to read great works. I'm not sure why I chose the busy Christmas period to make my first foray into Joyce - to be quite honest it was hard going at times. Unlike what I've heard of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, this collection of 15 stories was not arduous at all in terms of the style of writing, but I'm not a short story collection lover at the best of times, and I found myself often reading the book just for the sake of getting through it.Can I see what everyone raves about? Yes, I think I can. These stories were all about characterisation - subtleties and nuances which made each character quickly very believable and credible. It's just that clever as the writing and these characters were, I often found myself glazing over. I enjoyed the Dublin setting, and a number of the stories hooked me in, but many of them went nowhere, and sharply observant as the vignettes were they were often peppered with characters I didn't particularly like, which makes it hard for me to fall in love with writing even if it's from one of the so-called greats.I struggle with collections of short stories as they aren't long enough to suck me into page-turning addiction mode, and it can take me forever and day to get through a book like this as a result (despite it only being 250 pages long). Why did I pick this up then? Well, one of my late 2017 resolutions was to get back to doing more writing competitions again, and as I don't enjoy reading short stories I've been banging my head against a brick wall trying to write any that are a shade better than complete tripe. I wanted to examine the pace, the intros and the endings in particular, and how much plot to reveal.On that level the book did deliver, but there is a time for reading work like this, and I simply hadn't enough time or peace and quiet to give it the attention it deserved. This is a collection of stories that deserves to be studied, with attention given to the deftness of Joyce's literary art. I, on the other hand, was simply in the mood for reading for the sake of pure enjoyment.3 stars - I appreciated it, but felt like I dragged myself through much of it.

[thesmellofbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I finished the last story in this collection last night--Christmas Eve, coincidental with the story taking place on Christmas night. I have enjoyed every one of the tales in this book, the light brushstrokes with which each character and scene is painted, the reliance on simple human circumstances rather than action-heavy, moralistic plotlines. They rise from the page, leaving me with the sorts of emotions--wistfulness, annoyance, regret, joy--that I know well from real life. Beautiful.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quite apart from the perfection of “The Dead,” death permeates the stories, vignettes, character sketches and emotional revues of Dubliners. A death is announced in the first sentence of the first story, “Sisters.” Whether in the foreground or mentioned in passing, deaths are just part of life for those who live in Dublin. When death gets title billing in that final story, it is hardly surprisingly to find Joyce reaching some kind of summative view on the matter with the snow now general across all of Ireland.This time reading Dubliners, I was struck by the “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” and, as ever, “Araby.” But also “The Boarding House,” and “A Mother.” Yet standing apart from all of them is “The Dead.” It is so much more complete, so much more complex, so much more human and humane, and sadder. It truly is the culmination.Highly recommended, every time you read it.

[laytonwoman3rd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I began reading my lovely new Folio edition right out of the wrapper, and at first I couldn't quite see what the point of it all was. The first few stories, despite the clear brilliance of the writing---characters fully drawn in a couple sentences, images so sharp the smells of theriverthepubthesickroom come off the page--seemed to be all middle. The end of a story felt like the end of a chapter and I looked to pick up the scrap of thread that surely must be found in the pages to follow, but it never appeared. As so often happens with collections of short fiction, I connected with some of the pieces and not so much (or not at all) with others. I skipped one entirely after two paragraphs (that almost always happens too). But, and this will be no surprise to anyone who has read ANYTHING by Joyce (because it will have been "The Dead", 9 times out of 10), the final selection, "The Dead" just dropped me on my keister. It's perfectly made; the words are all Right-- there's never a lightning bolt when a lightning bug is what's wanted. It begins, it proceeds, it ends--in fact it ends with a paragraph so exquisite that, had I a drop of Irish blood in me, I would have been wailing. As it was, a tear was enough. My beloved cadre of 30-something current and former English professors (@lycomayflower, @geatland and others) have sung the praises of this story in my hearing over the last 10 years or so, and they don't exaggerate.Review written in August 2014

[dele2451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Melancholy stories of working class Irish men and their beleaguered women. Incredibly beautiful sentences about somewhat sad lives.

[turambar-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There is so very much which can be said about the power of Joyce's early style and the fact that it's equally present in the very shortest story of the collection, "Evaline," and the longest, most novelistic story, "The Dead." But many people have already said whatever I could say. Instead I will merely offer up the following; Dubliners taught me what a short story has the potential to be.

[dono421846 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like so many others, I read this collection in hopes of gathering momentum to attack Ulysses. I do think I acquired a better sense of his style, which is full portraiture of ordinary events. Little happens that qualifies as dramatic, yet the reader is still pulled along through the narratives. It is difficult to imagine why Joyce had such challenges getting this book published. But I suppose any group can blush at such an unromantic and truthful account of its members. Onward, I suppose, to Portrait.

[reread-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thoroughly enjoyed reading these short stories - the first I have read of Joyce. I've the centennial edition and the pages are cut in a serrated style which. is. AMAZING.What I didn't like, however, was the "Index" at the back of the book explaining Irish colloquialisms, which I obviously didn't mind, but it also felt the need to refer to every street name and bible/religious tones - something I tired of checking halfway through the book. Man, did that drag.

[cecrow · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Reading this collection was the first step of my master plan to tackle Mount Ulysses. Dubliners is said to be Joyce's most accessible work in addition to his earliest, so it seemed like the logical place to start. The reading is easy, but I was no further than the end of the first story, "The Sisters", when I turned to Sparknotes.com to ensure I wasn't missing something. Joyce purposely outlines and hints but doesn't fill in the whole puzzle; nothing much seems to happen, and in a sense that's the point. There's only what's on the surface, the theme rather than the events: how death makes us feel paralyzed by its strangeness, its simultaneous presence and lack thereof. In the subsequent stories he portrays other things besides death that unbalance us, leaving us faltering and disconnected: loss of innocence, exposure to illness or madness, first love, rebellion, intoxication, dull routine. Through these episodes we may gain insight that promises to guide us towards living our lives more fully, but insight alone is not enough. Positive change requires action but these characters are doomed to paralysis: they sentence themselves to understanding the truth of their chosen lot while doing nothing about it. Some stories hit painfully close to home, triggering my own regrets about opportunities I've passed on or the risks I didn't take.This collection has more unity than just its theme: there is also the locale of the title with which the theme is closely associated. These tales are meant to describe the plight of Dubliners and the Irish in general as a downtrodden lot. Some of the stories such as "Two Gallants" speak to this more directly than others through symbolism and mood. I still find them universally applicable. There's also a subtle aging in how the stories are ordered, the first being that of a child, up to the last about man who has been married for several years. Every age must contend with the same choice placed before them, to live or merely to exist. It isn't impossible to make the right choice, only improbable because our greatest obstacle is ourselves.

[jujunna · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm currently re-reading this book (the Norton edition) for perhaps the 8th time (or maybe more), in preparation for teaching it this fall semester. The wonderful thing about these short, pithy stories is that you CAN re-read them many times and get something more from them with every re-reading.

At first glance, they're pretty depressing, realistic portraits of life in turn-of-the-century Dublin. But a closer reading reveals rich underpinnings of symbol, allusion, even allegorical contexts. And the reader who persists, getting through all the stories to the last one, "The Dead," will be rewarded with a final vision of Irish hospitality and celebration, closing with a sense of equanimity (though not everyone reads the final passage this hopefully).

Joyce never fails to disappoint.

[jvioland_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Joyce was a fantastic writer. That is until he perpetrated the greatest fraud in the history of literature by producing "Ulysses" and resting on his laurels. He followed with an even more outrageous work "Finnegan's Wake" which I believe tweaked the noses of the literati, making it so incomprehensible that it "must be good". Bull. His "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Dubliners" proved his gift. "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake" show his sense of outrageous humor concerning his worshipers.

[romonko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James Joyce's collection of short stories were written one hundred years ago, but when you read them they seem relevant and important today. These stories collectively offer a revealing glimpse into life in Ireland at the dawn of the First World War. James Joyce has an uncanny talent in portraying lives lived and loves won and lost. It's almost as if you are secretly watching these people from a window. You get a first hand view as these characters live their lives and interact with their friends and family. The stories are about different people, but the place is always Dublin. Joyce has portrayed Dubliners as they really were at this point in time. The descriptions are beautifully written, the characters are real and life-like, and the beautiful language connects it all. I had read "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man" awhile ago, and was impressed then with Joyce's writing skills. But that was a novel and even though it was beautifully written, I was aware that he had the whole length of the novel to flesh out his characters. In these short stories the story and the characters are perfectly fleshed out in the space of the few pages for each of the fifteen stories. I couldn't really pick a favourite among them as each was an incredible masterpiece in its own right. A remarkable achievement and one that very few authors can achieve. In his time Joyce was known as a revolutionary author. His form, structure, language and creativity continue to influence writers today. I couldn't help but wonder how much top-rated authors like Alice Munro were influenced by Mr. Joyce's work. I definitely need to read a few more of this author's books. "Finnegan's Wake" and "Ulysses" are calling me.

[sloopjonb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The rating is for 'The Dead', the only story I have so far read, which was an incredible piece of writing. If only Joyce had carried on this vein, and not vanished up his own fundament, the show-off.

[baswood · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A slim volume of fifteen short stories make up James Joyce's first prose book published in 1914. They are easy to read apart from a few obscure Irish phrases and it soon becomes apparent that Joyce is writing with a realism and insight that must have seemed quite modern when they first appeared. They are slices of middle class life told in a simple fashion with no sudden plot twists or trickery and may at first seem rather inconsequential, however they are certainly not that and build up to "The Dead" one of the best short stories I have ever read. The book has an accumulative power with that final story bringing together many of the strands and themes that appear earlier in the shorter tales. All the stories are beautifully crafted with characters that are sketched in with such a preciseness that the reader feels at home with them straight away. The reader is never surprised with the actions (or in many cases inactions) that they take; they are a product of their times and those times are superbly caught by the author. Catholic Ireland in the first decade of the twentieth century was smarting under English rule and while a Nationalist uprising was just around the corner the middle class characters that inhabit Joyce stories seem as wary of the Nationalist as they are of English rule and while the political situation does not dominate their lives it is in the background to many of the stories, however Joyce is interested in the way people behave within their own community and his insights into the human condition are just as relevant today. Missed opportunities or a failure to follow a dream is a theme that predominates, but in many of the stories it would seem to me that the characters are better off not chasing that dream. The events in their lives lead many of them to an epiphany of some sort, it could be a crossroads, but the tragedy is that some of them only realise this after the opportunity has passed them by. There are no risks taken, characters are content to live the lives that they are born into, conventions are followed and you have to say that many of the choices made are inevitable and may even be the right choices. In "An Encounter" an adventurous young lad is curious about a strange man, who the reader can see could be a paedophile. In "Eveline" a young domestic is given the chance to run away to Argentina with a man who she may love. In "Araby" a teenager is desperate to get to a local Bazaar to buy a present for a girl on whom he has a crush. In "A Painful Case" James Duffy a confirmed bachelor meets a married woman whose company he yearns for and whom he finds intellectually stimulating. Many of the stories touch on situations that many of us will have come across; if not in our own lives then in the lives of friends or acquaintances and we cannot help but be drawn into the consequences for the characters in Joyce's stories.Once the reader is used to the idea that the stories seem to follow a natural course he can let the prose do it's work; which is to capture the milieu of middle class life, to enter into the thoughts and feelings in such a way that there in no feeling of intrusion. Joyce is a master of non manipulation; their is no preaching, no moral stance, people behave as they will with few surprises; it is left to the reader to appreciate what he has just read and to follow his own reaction to the events that take place. There are few writers that can tap into my thoughts and feelings the way that Joyce can in [Dubliners] and [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]. The first story "Sisters" starts with the death of an old priest about whom there may be something untoward and the effect on a young lad who has grown close to him. The last story "The Dead" continues the grand theme of the march towards death by invoking the dead in the actions and thoughts of a party of friends gathering for a Christmas celebration. This masterful story brings many of the other stories into focus with a symbol of a snowfall that appears to deaden the lives of Joyce's characters; some marvellous prose completes the story:Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling" After all the realism of the earlier stories Joyce's final lurch into the metaphysical world has the power of contrast that juxtaposes all that has gone before. A five star read.

[edgeworth_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I have a list of major authors whom I’ve never read in a Notepad file: Dickens, Faulkner, Carver, Woolf, etc. This stems from being a young reader in the 21st century, looking back across history at the overwhelming weight of the human canon. My theory is that while there are far too many great books in the world for anybody to read in one lifetime, you should try to read at least one book from all the major authors, to sample their style and see if they take your fancy or not, to discover whether you want to pursue their works further. James Joyce is on that list, and since there is not a chance in hell I’m ever going to read Ulysses, I thought it appropriate to read his short story anthology Dubliners.I’m not going to try to talk my way around it: I hated this book. It was extremely tedious. Rarely did any of the fifteen stories gathered within capture my attention in any way; more often than not, I found myself distracted and daydreaming, and had to keep snapping my focus back to the page. I finished the book yesterday and can properly summarise exactly zero of the stories for you. I can tell you virtually nothing about the plots they contain, let alone the thematic weight they are supposed to carry. This is not to say that they are bad or useless or pointless; merely that whatever literary heft they have was lost on this reader. Dubliners, just so we’re clear, is not written in the same deliberately confusing modernist stream-of-consciousness style that Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake are. It’s a perfectly normal, ordinary style of writing. It’s just very, very boring.I’m not a stupid or crass reader. I have read, enjoyed, appreciated and even loved the works of Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, J.M. Coetzee and Peter Carey, to name a few. But I hated Dubliners, and if that makes me a philistine then so be it.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

15 short stories which paint a picture of life in “dear, dirty Dublin” in the first decade of the 20th century. It’s a little uneven, with some of the stories too short or less interesting, yet is certainly worth reading. My favorites were “A Little Cloud”, in which a man comes to grips with his failed literary dreams and the idea that his baby son was now getting all of the attention from his wife, and the last story, “The Dead”, which has an awkward and insecure man pondering life and death, and just how little he knows about his wife’s past. That gives you a taste for the moments of self-realization, or ‘epiphanies’, the characters in these unflinchingly honest stories feel.