Poems and Exiles - James Joyce

Advantages: Good reading
Disadvantages: Using references a fair bit.

...Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce, 15 in all, written about the people and places in Dublin.(Oddly enough) James Joyce (1882-1941) was born in Dublin to a middle class catholic family, whose social and economic status declined during Joyce's youth and adolescence. "Dubliners" Joyce himself remarked, was meant to reveal the paralysis at the heart of Irish society. Each of the 15 stories deals with a different aspect of Dublin life. Joyce claimed there was a structural progression followed, from childhood to adolescence through to adulthood and private life. (Though this is disputed by some) If you know little about Joyce, as I did, this is an excellent place to start finding out. I wasn't really going to bother, I thought until my wife collected enough i Points to afford a trip to Dublin. The ferry we went... Read review

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...Dubliners is a book of understated excellence. Dubliners represents prose at its aesthetic maximum. Joyce’s method in Dubliners is breathtakingly economical: the words are stretched taut across the page to reveal the drab, moribund nature of a tired and defeated city. Yet Joyce maintains his personal beliefs: the ideas of epiphany rising out of straightforward existence, and his lyricism at such moments adds to the charm of this composite work. The depressing, yet somehow uplifting tale of suburban life, Dubliners is the art of Joyce at its economical best: a testament to the skill of an author who would later destroy that which he had striven so carefully to render.... Read review

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...Ulysses is a book that mere words cannot describe. Joyce’s modernist classic, for me represents the pinnacle of his achievements as a writer. It is not the dry social critique of Dubliners, nor is it the somewhat self-indulgent and impenetrable treatise that is Finnegan’s Wake. Rather, Ulysses occupies a ground between the two; the perfect balance between theme and method. The symbolic and perfectly rendered journey of Leopold Bloom reveals a consciousness, not just belonging to the Irish man, but relevant to a modern humanity. In doing so, Joyce depicts the epiphanies to be yielded from ordinary modern life, and the aesthetic code which such epiphanies require. Ulysses is a multi-layered masterpiece of twentieth century fiction.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful