I bought this copy of Dubliners in a shop in Huntingdon during a terrible rainstorm. Although I tried to keep it dry, one corner of the back cover is still wet, as I'm trying to register it.

My original copy is still sitting with the rest of the boxed set, awaiting my attention.

The plan is to send this new one to BookGroupMan, with a copy of Sue Townsend's Rebuilding Coventry, as a thank-you for Joseph Heller's Closing Time. I'm sorry it took me an extra day to find Dubliners to include in the parcel, but do hope BookGroupMan will enjoy reading it, and journal it in due course.

Thanks Chris, i'm looking forward to this. Not a weighty classic, which is part of its appeal! I tried to get my book group interested, but was outvoted by Jane Austen (too many women). You who know the sort, all breathless maidens, scheming matriarchs, steely jawed beaus, Pride & Sensibility or something like that...

One of those slow-burn books that never really sets fire at all – although I’m sure it needs and deserves another read, and greater concentration. Unfortunately, I am a product of the fast-food, quick fix, society, where books are commodities to be packaged, marketed and consumed as quickly as possible, we (I) sometimes don’t get the deeper and subtler meanings first time, or at all. I was expecting a little more explicit connection between the stories and the characters, and a stronger sense of the Dublin the city and the Irish coming through; a modern writer (like Peter Carey?), would probably include a lot more dialect, and give the poor reader a bit more context, e.g. current political & economic climate, tensions with the England (maybe I need to read the revision notes?) I found this review; “Dubliners, in fact, in spite of the presence of subjective revelatory moments in the single stories, can be seen as a sequence of multiple objective epiphanies because what actually emerges from the book as a whole is the revelation of the city itself, perceived in its spiritual, intellectual and moral paralysis”…er, just what I was thinking! Personally, I thought that some of the stories – 1 short story per Dubliner – were exquisitely wrought, but strangely subdued, packing a lot into very few words, either powerful themes such as death, unrequited love, frustrated ambitions/malaise, or seemingly mundane but resonant events. I’m not sure if the casual reader can view them as ‘epiphanies’ if you can’t follow the characters beyond the critical events/revelations, also there is not a great deal of ‘1st person’ reflection & narration that you get in modern novels to hold ones hand. These are very much fin de siecle tales (published in 1914, at the end of the so-called age of innocence), and decidedly of their time. A couple of quotes that I picked up.
From ‘A Mother’ - Mrs Kearney – a shrewish & frustrated ‘pushy mother’
“She respected her husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office, as something large, secure, and fixed; and though she knew the small number of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male”

From ‘The Dead’ – about his wife’s former lover who dies rather than live without her
“One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”

(6 stars - might have been more, if I had understood more!)

Released on Tuesday, November 25, 2003 at OBZ - Le Cafe Maison, Thorpe Road in Norwich, England United Kingdom.

Given to my lil sis to deliver to the OBCZ in Norwich - near where she lives. You never know I might even convert, her once she sees the joy of free books first hand...

have picked it up and will send it to friends, hope they like it :-)