Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1922 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-28
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
"Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?...To give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own." - James Joyce, in a letter to his brother. With these fifteen stories, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental. Whether writing about the death of a fallen priest ("The Sisters"), the petty sexual and fiscal machinations of "Two Gallants," or of the Christmas party at which an uprooted intellectual discovers just how little he really knows about his wife ("The Dead"), Joyce takes narrative places it had never been before.

Customer Reviews

Worthwhile read, but not particularly a page-turner
This is a collection of short stories, centering around characters in Dublin. Joyce's grasp of human psychology is profound, and he weaves this into narratives of domestic life and tensions. He manages to create a nostalgia within these stories that resonates with a wistful sadness, almost as if the personalities encapsulate his own regret or yearning for the past.

Although the ability of the book to really grab the reader is limited, Joyce's writing and the depth of character of his stories, really makes the effort worthwhile.

Okay-ish
This collection of short stories is generally agreeable, though occasionally disturbing. Varied quality too, for instance, `The Boarding House' is excellent and the worst is probably `Grace' which is only average. The shorter of the short stories tend to be the better ones and end very well. Of course there is the long introduction (not Joyce) which does not necessarily enhance the appreciation. I hear that the early stuff is best so I will not be rushing to read `Ulysees'.

Moving, Funny, never Boring
A newcomer to James Joyce, I was looking forward to reading a work by an author associated so closely with the modernist " stream of consciousness" style of writing.
Joyce was simply a poet, and some sentences and passages in this book are better than Shakespeare etc. the 15 short stories are all set in Dublin, and all contain a range of different characters with different emotions, feelings, and indeed outlooks on life.
" An Encounter" is beautifully written from a child's point of view. Encountering someone who is essentially a paedophile will be a strange experience for a child, and, through Joyce, the boy simply tells the reader what he sees. Yet, the story is still disturbing and haunting.
My particular favourites are " Araby", focusing on a boy who is infatuated with a girl, it also contains the best line in the book in " but my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like strings running upon the wires"; " A little cloud", about a man who realises his failed journalistic career, and indeed the loss of affection for his wife; and " a painful case", again, like " A little cloud" centring on a man who has wasted his life, and, once he finds his true love, lets her go from him until it is too late when she dies.
The 15 stories are all poetically flawless Joyce's real strength here is that he both manages to write archaically yet keeping the reader interested.
Thanks to this book I now intend to read Joyce's other great works " Finnegans Wake" and then, his classic, " Ulysses".