Product Description

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader understand Joyce's use of textures, dialect, and symbols. Each of the beautifully written short stories in this collection precisely details a brief scene in the life of a resident of Dublin at the turn of the 20th century. Although the characters do not know each other, their experiences unfold along the same streets and often overlap thematically. Their tragedies mirror that of Ireland, a country struggling for political identity and held back, in Joyce's view, by rigid religious ideas and adherence to tradition. Joyce's great skill at dialect offers a sense of the city's complex social structure, while themes of isolation, emotional paralysis, violence, regret, and death run throughout the collection and link all of the stories. Chronologically, too, the stories appear to progress; portrayals of youthful confusion and disillusionment in the opening story, "The Sisters," become the haunting midlife meditations of "The Dead." Like his masterpieces Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce's Dubliners displays consummate control of nuances, emotions, and images.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11430 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Released on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 190 pages

Customer Reviews

"A long mournful whistle into the mist"

Although James Joyce lived outside of his native Ireland for most of his life, his work is as Irish as peat smoke. His story collection Dubliners, published in 1914, consists of fifteen slices of early 20th century life in the city where Joyce was born. Dublin itself is a detailed backdrop, and the self-awareness of the characters plays out on Dublin's streets and interiors. The reader doesn't find rollicking plots here, but the character sketches are rewarding and somewhat open-ended. Many of the characters are at some turning point or epiphany; many are rather unlovely; but all go under the lens with no moral judgment from the author. This is not a book that spoon-feeds attitudes or opinions.

Joyce reveals to us a boy whose adventure leads to a brush with a child molester; a young woman planning to elope but choosing the safety of domestic servitude at the last minute; a boarding house proprietor who turns a blind eye as her daughter gets pregnant by one of the residents; a rage-filled clerk who craves drink and takes out his frustration on his colleagues and family; an emotionally remote man who spurns the affection of a woman and is confronted with his own loneliness when he sees her obituary in the paper. In the final story, the novella-length "The Dead," Gabriel is an educated but socially awkward character who suddenly realizes that his lack of engagement with life is profoundly crippling.

These characters don't seem to be putting their best feet forward for the reader's entertainment, but they ARE drenched in their own realities. The trappings of religion thread through the stories ("the Holy Ghost and the banshee"), as do poverty, drink, repression, fear and rage. Was this the Ireland feeling its national identity, unfurling itself after the Local Government Act set it on a liberating course to Home Rule? Dubliners is like a family portrait taken early in the morning after a long, hard night; there's no romanticizing and it may not be the whole truth, but you have to acknowledge that the shadowed eyes and weary postures have a crystalline reality. Five stars.

Linda Bulger, 2008

Literature For Those Who Appreciate It.
There are wine enthusiasts who claim that certain vintages are wasted on those who fail to appreciate them. I'd never go that far in trying to restrict anyone from reading anything that's out there, but in Dubliners there is a certain sense that for those who have trained their minds to seek out the nuances hidden within literature, a great reward lies waiting. These ultra-realistic, almost dry stories of ordinary men and women and the para-extraordinary in each of their lives, is set in Dublin, circa 1900, and is one of those collections that shows a new side of itself on every reading. Plus unlike most of Joyce's work, this book is easily readable.

ONE OF THE BEST - EVER!!!
One of the best short-story collections ever written. I advise you brush up on Irish history, particularly the late 19th, early 20th century so you catch some of the political/religious in-jokes. `The Dead' is arguably the best short story ever written in English - or any other language for that matter. My favorite though is `Two Gallants,' hilarious & a real mystery till the very end. University profs love shoving `Araby' down their students' throats because it supposedly displays most clearly Joyce's epiphany scheme. `Ulysses' I've read 3 times, I've read another 10 or so critical commentary books on it, still don't get it. Maybe Joyce didn't even get it & all those folks, like Ezra Pound, etc., who claimed to have understood it fully were bluffing.
Oh yeah, a short, two-week visit to Dublin would also help in understanding more fully Joyce's work. Anyone got, say, $3000 I can borrow?

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