Rating: 
Summary: Weird, fun, incomprehensible
Review: Finnegan's Wake is perhaps the most difficult book in the world to read. If you hope to understand it, don't read it. There is no way to possibly comprehend this book. I have read 590 of the 628 pages and am convinced that it is an enjoyable book that nobody in their right mind could understand. Even if you read thousand page books in a day, give yourself an absolute minimum of a week for this great work of nothing. Not a book for the impatient. --Sean Moberg --13 years old
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet Jesus, the man is insane!
Review: That pretty much says it all. Some of the most incomprehensible prose in the English (?) language, though Burroughs beats him by a nose.
Rating:
Summary: Will drive you nuts
Review: Finagans Wake is unlike anything I every read. It's a bit scary. You catch yourself seeing and thinking of words in reference to the dream world of the Wake. Give yourself about four months and get a hold of Tindall's guide. Although the Wake deserves five stars, I most confess Joyce's use of obscene and vulgar motifs detracts from the work on the whole. If your going to be in traction for a while this the book for you.Waken knot new!
Rating:
Summary: Cunning Linguistics
Review: an ineluctable trasmission of the incommodious
Rating:
Summary: Speak like a jackeen!
Review: Much of the humour of Finnigan's Wake comes from reading the book in a Dublin accent. So if you've never been then try and go and apply the cadences of speech you hear to the novel, new avenues will open up within the text itself and other passages will reveal themselves.
Rating:
Summary: hmm, okay
Review: The author shows promise
Rating:
Summary: Transcendental Art
Review: Finnegan's Wake is a book apart from others. It does not succeed because of great characterisation, fascinating plot, or for any of the usual criteria with which we generally judge literature. Rather, it succeeds because of the purity of Joyce's vision; this is not a cultural purity -- in fact, it is quite the reverse -- it is instead an artistic one. Comparable to the visual techniques of Tanguy and Kandinsky, or to the musical techniques of LaMonte Young, it functions way beyond the dynamics of conventional art. It is, to grant it proper appreciation, impenetrable through normal eyes; hence, the polarisation of the reviews on this page. Here, finally, is what Joyce was building to over the course of his writing (following 'A Portrait...' and 'Ulysses'). He reached a point of transcendence, where he was no longer constrained by, among other things, conventional grammar, or the use of a single language at a time. Where everyday language is clumsy compared to, say, musical expression, the voice of 'Finnegan's Wake' is liquid -- and this is something that no other writer achieved to the same degree. It is infinitely subtle, each word functioning as its own microcosm, but also operating as part of the grand design of the book. Particularly, this characterises the eloquent divergence of the 'final' pages. The book is concise: it is perfect. It is, in this sense, a 'pure' work of art, something to be studied and admired for its ingenious beauty, rather than read casually on the toilet. And, sixty years later, mankind has yet to fashion a more coherent and complete literary vision.
Rating: 
Summary: Mad with Vanity
Review: That was how English novelist Evelyn Waugh descibed Joyce when he came to write FW, and the judgment is apt. The book itself is tripe; but the contortions Joyce fans put themselves through to justify it are always a source of amusement.
Rating:
Summary: I watch too much TV
Review: I don't understand this book. I picked up many literary aides and guides to this book and set about getting through it. It is so subtle and difficult... the rewards of understanding this book are not worth the effort. This is a good writer trying to be a real literary cool dude and give PhD students something to focus on. But I admit, the reason I don't like this book is because I am an illiterate moron. I should have never picked this book up; I wasted precious time I could have been watching "Friends," or "Seinfeld." I could have been working on cherry-red Camaro, or down pounding some brews with my buddies, watching the big game. Or I could have been wallowing in my own filth in the pig stye I call my den. This book must be fabulous, I am sure, but because I am a lazy, ignorant, slovenly fool, who likes his books monosyllabic and easy to digest, I don't like this book. I wish I was Mr. Cool Guy College Professor and this book could be my life, but all I have is my rear-projection TV. Tragic, *sniff*
Rating: 
Summary: a good effort
Review: Not bad. Promising. Imaginative use of language. Could have been more coherent.
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