Dubliners - James Joyce

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, all of which are set in, you've guessed it, Dublin. The book was published in 1914 and is available in the Penguin Popular Classics range - you should be able to pick it up for £1. My previous forays into Penguin Popular Classics have had mixed results - Treasure Island was very good, Robinson Crusoe was dire. Happily, Dubliners joins the very good category. Joyce was only 25 when he ...
...read. To sum up, Dubliners is the sort of book that would benefit greatly from repeated reading - I am sure that when I read it again I will pick up on nuances and deeper meanings in the text that I missed before. Each story is cleverly written and entwines you in the lives of the characters with amazing speed. As the cover notes of the book say, "the stories are as refreshingly original and astonishing today as when they were first published in ...

jonathancowley 15.11.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

...a few stories in the Dubliners in which Joyce puts the newly developed middle class under his ‘looking glass’, and shows up their many flaws with the ‘scrupulous meanness’ he shows his other characters. Through Jimmy Doyle, the young adventurous protagonist, who lives ‘in excess’ but kindles little ambition or talent, we are reminded of the bias of social pretensions and the superficiality of society at the time. ...
...the ‘paralysis’ in which many Dubliners were monotonously bound, and ‘the Continent’ that parades its ‘wealth and industry’. The disparity between the immobility of the onlookers and the prosperous forward motion of the continentals not only acts as a reminder of the dire poverty of many of the Dubliners, it also reminds us of the economical depression that Ireland suffered from at the time. Even at such an early ...

sinead135 02.12.2002 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

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 ...
...a Wordsworth classics version of Dubliners and afforded myself a first James Joyce reading experience. Wordsworth Classics have a web presence at www.wordsworth-editions.com. This book, new or possibly second hand, can be bought from www.Amazon.co.uk At Amazon last time I looked in there were 46 used and new versions. Your local book shop may have a cheap copy also. The book, complete and unabridged contains an introduction which you are advised ...

parker-munn 05.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

I may be a bit biased because I am a Joyce fanatic. However, this collection of short stories is definitely worth a look. At the time Joyce wrote Dubliners, the short story was the fictional medium to use. Strangely though, although the stories can be read in isolation, some of the richest meanings are gained when the stories are seen as a collection that is both unified and divided. Joyce's early work is seemingly more 'accessible' to the casual ...
...meaness' is seemingly not one of literary 'richness'. However, in reality the richness is all there to be had; its just that the reader needs to extract it. If the stories are read in conjunction then more parallels, 'themes' (although I hate that idea), symbols and ideas become progressively more apparent. However, this is not to say that reading the stories cannot be rewarding first time round. The style is poignant, at times shocking and always ...

lizzie_haycocks 23.02.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

...banging heads on walls, but Dubliners is quite accessible, even if, at points, quite difficult. Funnily enough, the first story is the hardest to understand, which maybe Joyce does purposely? I think so, the more you read of his, the more it dawns on you that Joyce doesn't like rules. Any rules at all. And that includes with writing... expect to find sentences beginning with subjects, nouns, adjectives, compounds, or in fact anything he wants. Some ...
...Dubliners is a book containg fifteen short (but bleak!) stories about life in, and experiences of, Dublin, and are all focused on the themes of death and disease, which, though at first disheartening, The first four stories are focussed on the themes of childhood: ~The Sisters~ A story about a father dying. Immediately the book begins with a death, but through the eyes of a young boy. The sisters, as the title of the short story, are conversing ...

steffee 27.09.2001 (21.04.2004) · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

The first time that you read it, you'll probably wonder what was the point. The second time, you'll see his genius. Joyce writes in a way that I had never encountered before I picked up this book. His style is naturalistic, which is difficult to get used to at first, but it basically mean that he is able to weave ambiguity into the stories which makes them much more rewarding. Joyce is clearly in love with his home city and he describes it as almost ...
...this book, get one with good annotation if you can because there are a lot of colloquial phrases that will probably seem confusing as first. However, understanding these words is much like understading the book itself, if you persevere you will be handsomely rewarded. This is not an easy book, but it is something that you need to read for yourself and something that I am sure will enrich your life as it enriched mine. ...

Garfinkel 21.04.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce

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 ...

asheem_singh 25.06.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Dubliners - James Joyce