Dubliners

Rating:
Summary: A Master Storyteller
Review: James Joyce's Dubliners is one of the best collection of short stories ever penned. The characters are memorable, the plots are subtle, gripping and frequently ironic, the atmosphere of "dear dirty Dublin" rings true, and the writing is eloquent and disciplined. While his novels (e.g. Ulysses) get more attention, Dubliners may be his best work. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Hope
Review: I had to read this for school, and after reading all of the stories i was amazed. James Joyce combined themes of adolescence and hope to create a story that protrayed the interesting theme of paralyisis. Throughout the stories he portrays the themes of hope and how the people of Dublin react to its presence or lack thereof. Stories like "Evelyn" are so vividly written, with emotion that you can actually see the characters and their stories, "Evelyn" is one of my favorite stories that really shows how paralysis affects the lives of the characters. The last story, "The Dead", is the only story in Dubliners that really shows that hope is an option and what makes Dubliners so realistic is that there is no happy ending, just choice and what the consequences are. James Joyce represent Dublin with these stories of life, and how the people of Ireland lived in the past and were not aware of the future. They lived their lives thinking of the dead, forgetting that they were alive, and "Dubliners" is an amazing novel, that gives hope. I would recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Dublin reality
Review: Having glanced at some of the reviews preceeding mine, I should note that I am not a literary scholar or student, and I have no special understanding of post modernism or other literary currents. I just stumbled across the book and read it as I would any other book, and my review is based on no more insight than what a regular reader would have.
Disclaimer having been duly posted, on with the review:
The stories themselves are brief images of lives in Dublin in the late 18, early 19 hundreds. These I divide generally into two types of stories: intimate and detached.
The intimate ones put you in the place of one of the characters. You share their experience and their thoughts as the story unfolds around them. The story, however, is often more of a non-story; simply a slice of life, which may or may not be mundain, depending on the story. These stories are no different in concept than other daily-life short stories by other authors.
The detatched stories, on the other hand, are different. One could go so far as to say that if the concept of "reality TV" existed back then, they would probably be a manifestation of it. These stories put the reader as an observer on the side, looking in with the lense of Joyce's eloquent writing. In some of the stories, in fact, you get little insight into the minds of other characters than what is interpreted from their mannerism, facial expressions, body language, and so on. In some cases you get a brief occational view of the main character's general beliefs, but in "Ivy day in the committee room", for example, you are exposed to none of the inner workings of any of the characters. The readers feel as though they are another person in the room, sitting silently on a couch in the corner, looking around and simply taking everything in. You know nothing at all of what goes on in the minds of the other participants in the room. Instead, you get a detailed description of the sights, the sounds, the motions, the talk, the mood and the atmosphere.

This role of detached observance which I as a reader found myself was one I was not accustomed to in books; it is a role one assumes more often when reading a play or watching a movie. In literature, it takes some getting used to. For such form to work with a story, exposition is key, and fortunately, Joyce is masterful. You really feel in the story (albeit as an observer); sensing what the characters sense, feeling what they do. You can read their faces to try and understand what they are thinking, filling in yourself what is not explicitly stated.

Unfortunately, this is not always enough. The problem with real life is that, for the most part, it is boring and mundain. Most of our days are routine and would not likely interest anyone spying in on us. We could probably find a portion of our life that would interest others if we told them about it, but we would have to choose carefuly, or our listeners would lose interest. In the choice of some of the stories, I felt that Joyce had perhaps been too casual; literally, nothing happens. I finished these stories feeling that they were cut short of their actual end, and wondering if I missed the point. It was as though someone had told me about their day - woke up, brushed teeth, had breakfast, etc - nothing outside routine. Regardless of how well the story is told, at the end of it, you are left wondering, "why did he tell me this?"

Still, the vividness of details leads you through the stories, even when you don't understand their purpose; the ones who's point I could understand were good, even excellent. It is a good experience of a culture, place, people and era I was unfamiliar with, and enough interesting stories in this collection to make it an enjoyable read, especially for people who enjoy good narration.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Narratology studies, but otherwise mediocre
Review: Like many, I had to read this book as part of the requirements for my freshman course on narrative fiction in college. I was not impressed. Sure, for analysis on character portrayal techniques and center of consciousness theory, Dubliners is a useful and convenient tool; but as an example of brilliant writing, it falls very short. The fact of the matter is that some stories are better than others and to judge the book as a single work is a grievous mistake. It's surprizing there has not been a formal study of the many flaws in this book.

Rating:
Summary: A portrait of a city's soul
Review: These fifteen stories create a world. They present different aspects of the life of Dublin .They foreshadow the themes of Joyce's more extensive works, " The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" "Ulysses" and "Finnegan's Wake".
They present a picture of a city curiously static and dead, and yet somehow miraculously alive. It is quite fitting that the concluding story, the longest story really a novella is called " The Dead"
The stories present not simply a variety of characters and types but also insight into varying moments of life and soul's development.
About them and through them there is nonetheless an uneasy and unquiet feeling about life's fundamental disatisfaction. And this when the poetic intensity of Joyce's language pervades and presents throughout a quiet and deep beauty.



Rating:
Summary: Dubliners
Review: Dubliners is Joyce's first paean to his native city, a quiet, gentle look at the peoples and places that make up the identify of Ireland. Through 15 short - some very short - stories, we are introduced to a wide variety of people, from sad schoolboys to priests to dried up old aunts to merry young women to carousing drunks, as they go about their lives.

The stories are presented more as brief snapshots of a man or woman's life, than as a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. Throughout, there is very little conflict, no bangs, no explosions, and no horrific or unexpected twists. Rather, we see a boy obsessively in love with a girl, or a man sad that a love he rejected years earlier has died, or a woman plotting with some friends to bring her husband back to the Catholic Church. Because of these mild plots, we are able to delve deep into each character, exploring what it means to be an Irish person at the starts of the twentieth century.

While not obviously connected, most of the stories have minor similarities in characters or references. Very often, a throwaway line concerning a previous or upcoming story will make its way on to the page, which serves to create a cohesive whole from the disconnected stories. And of course, the city of Dublin joins them all together into a great song.

The writing style is not typical Joyce. There are mild patches of density here and there, but for the most part everything is straight forward. Ulysses this is not. But instead of tackling the scope of that enormous work, Dubliners is more concerned with chronicling the daily activities of ordinary people. A Catholic background would make certain sections of the novel more enjoyable, but is by no means necessary.

What Joyce has done here is to create a certain mood for a city. While grim - or more accurately, poor - there is an undercurrent of joy, perhaps not for the events taking place, but for the people in the stories. We are presented with reality, unflinching, unapologetic reality. And it is beautiful.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important Collection of Modern Short Stories...
Review: James Joyce defined the modern conception of what a literary short story is; how they should be character-driven pieces which end in an epiphany. How important then is The Dubliners, which features every short story Joyce ever wrote. The prototypical epiphantic story is "Araby," yet the best story in the collection is "The Dead," which is really a novella.

As good and important as these short stories are, I wouldn't recommend the novice reading them cold. Without an idea of who Joyce was, it will just seem that nothing happens in these stories. Of course, one must realize that `nothing happening' is what these stories are about; how the Irish had become a paralyzed, enslaved society.

Yet, on a more important level, I would recommend getting a reading guide simply for the cultural references that the modern person shouldn't be expected to get. There is a great deal of slang in The Dubliners. The entire point of the story "Clay" will be lost unless one knows what clay signifies in the Irish Halloween ritual. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room," is almost indecipherable unless one knows the names of the figures of early twentieth-century Irish politics. I actually used the Cliffs Notes for these and I found them very useful.


Rating:
Summary: Good introduction to Joyce
Review: Allow me to preface, I'd actually give this four and a half, only because it's not Joyce's finest work.
If you enjoy a good story, that's engaging and will require some imagination about a time and place almost a century ago, then check this out. Joyce is one of the most hyped authors of all time, dare I say, and he delivers with this collection of short stories, which varies, and describes the human condition in a way that despite its settings of times past, is stil surprisingly contemporary.
If you have an interest in Joyce, check this out. If you're adventurous, start with Ulyses, then this one. I hope if you have an interest in this author, that you check it out and enjoy that which Dubliners has to offer.

Rating:
Summary: Great craft, but not so enjoyable to read
Review: Had to read this for a class. Although Joyce is the master, and using this book as a text for study was helpful in my fiction writing, I have never been a big fan of Joyce from a enjoyment standpoint. To me, it's like watching Citizen Kane for a film class. A masterpiece, but I probably wouldn't want to read it again.

Rating:
Summary: A Master Storyteller
Review: James Joyce's Dubliners is one of the best collection of short stories ever penned. The characters are memorable, the plots are subtle, gripping and frequently ironic, the atmosphere of "dear dirty Dublin" rings true, and the writing is eloquent and disciplined. While his novels (e.g. Ulysses) get more attention, Dubliners may be his best work. Highly recommended.