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The Dead
The Dead
The Dead
Audiobook1 hour

The Dead

Written by James Joyce

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Often hailed as the finest short story ever written in the English language, James Joyce's "The Dead" tells the story of a young woman who hears a familiar song unexpectedly at a Christmas party. The melody brings memories of a long-dead lover flooding back to her. Joyce's description of the multi-layered situation, characters, and atmosphere are unsurpassed. The reader is drawn into the stifling world of Dublin society with its aspirations, pretensions, repressed morals, and furtively enjoyed freedoms. Beautiful and evocative.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 28, 2013
ISBN9781467668835
Author

James Joyce

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He came from a reasonably wealthy family which, predominantly because of the recklessness of Joyce's father John, was soon plunged into financial hardship. The young Joyce attended Clongowes College, Belvedere College and, eventually, University College, Dublin. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, and eloped with her to Croatia. From this point until the end of his life, Joyce lived as an exile, moving from Trieste to Rome, and then to Zurich and Paris. His major works are Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939). He died in 1941, by which time he had come to be regarded as one of the greatest novelists the world ever produced.

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Reviews for The Dead

Rating: 4.105882426666668 out of 5 stars
4/5

255 ratings9 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a good introduction to James Joyce. Short yet enticing. Joyce is indeed a master of words and tells a story without embellishment. Despite its melancholy tone, The Dead leaves one with a feeling of hope. Gabriel Conroy might have been a smug, hypocritical and somewhat shallow character, but the eerie ending with the snow falling "upon all the living and the dead" sets the stage for Gabriel's second epiphany. It lets the reader know that he has undergone a transformation that just might allow him to have a genuine connection to his wife.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Reading is a bit roughly done, but doesn’t ruin the story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A boring dinner party ends with a poignant moment - that is all.

    It did add some depth of emotion to Emily Prentiss at the end of Demonology, S4E17, Criminal Minds.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?"
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    First James Joyce book I’ve ever read. Wasn’t what I was expecting. Really liked the style of writing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    An extraordinary piece of fiction which starts off being about one thing, then turns into a story about something else, but then turns in a completely different story. Joyce does this in a seamless way that makes it seem inevitable. The very end is devastating.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Dead is the final story of Joyce's Dubliners and that works crowning achievement. It is considered one of the finest short stories ever written. The main character is essentially a man that Joyce might have become had he stayed in Ireland instead of living his life as an exile. Joyce of course would become the world class author and would be immortalized in his works. This is the underlying theme of the Dead. Everyone in the Dead is of course Dead, never actually having really existed, but the fact that you read the story breathes life into the work and thus gives immortality to the author (who is not dead symbolically). Thus the Dead deals with a common Joycean theme, that true immortality is not achieved through a fantasy afterlife, it is achieved here and now through immortal art.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Utterly boring, mannered, nothing happens until the last few pages and the translation is abysmal. Don't even get close to it.NOTE: after seeing the rattings given by everybody else, I am starting to think I missed something. I still remember it as extremely boring.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Given its status as runaway bestseller, I found this somewhat unimpressive. The storyline is captivating and the history and art are definitely thought-provoking. But this simply isn't a gripping tale.