Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dubliners
    Dubliners
    Dubliners
    Audiobook (abridged)54 minutes

    Dubliners

    Written by James Joyce

    Narrated by Charles Keating

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    TV actor Charles Keating provides superb narratives of "Araby", "Eveline", and "Counterparts" from Joyce's brilliant collection of stories, rich with memorable characters and displaying his genius for the subtleties and nuances of language.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9780486781495
    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.

    More audiobooks from James Joyce

    Related to Dubliners

    Related audiobooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 21, 2017

      The book I’ve read the most this year is Antwerp by Roberto Bolaño. I read a few pages from it every morning before I crawl across the floor to my desk. It’s Bolaño distilled. It’s a crime story, a death story, a sex story, a love story, but always i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Anton Chekhov

      Jun 10, 2021

      Anton Chekhov
      2 min read

    • Article

      Ulysses: Good or Bad?

      Feb 2, 2018

      Ulysses: Good or Bad?
      10 min read

    • Article

      Crime Travel

      Feb 3, 2022

      Crime Travel
      2 min read

    • Article

      Professor Nigel Saul

      Jan 28, 2021

      Professor Nigel Saul
      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Good American’: One Man Struggled To Make The World Right

      Nov 10, 2020

      As America stepped into conflicts across the world in the late 20th century, one bureaucrat took on the thankless task of tallying up the human cost.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Unreleased Orson Welles Film ‘The Other Side Of The Wind’ Arrives

      Nov 2, 2018

      For Welles aficionados, and perhaps only for them, “The Other Side of the Wind” will function as a skeleton key to the themes and obsessions of his entire career.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Salinger’s Nightmare

      Apr 13, 2017

      Salinger’s Nightmare
      9 min read

    • Article

      Some Like It Overheated: How Marilyn Monroe Is Betrayed By Blonde

      Sep 28, 2022

      Before Diana, there was another blonde whose potent blend of fragility and beauty stirred up pity and lust, and whose tragic death at age 36 cemented her status as a cultural obsession. Half a century after her fatal overdose (or suicide, or murder –

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018

      May 15, 2018

      Tom Wolfe, 1931–2018
      6 min read

    • Article

      How to Read a Squiggle

      Jul 18, 2017

      How to Read a Squiggle
      6 min read

    • Article

      Pretend it’s a City: How to discover Fran Lebowitz’s Seventies New York

      Feb 22, 2021

      The new Netflix documentary series from Martin Scorsese, Pretend It’s A City, has been hailed as “a love letter to New York” but its subject, famously curmudgeonly cultural observer Fran Lebowitz, is better known for complaining about the city than w

      4 min read

    • Article

      Lost in Space

      Sep 7, 2023

      The original “Lost in Space,” which aired on CBS from 1965 to 1968, was created by Irwin Allen at the height of the space race. The series began as a “Swiss Family Robinson” adventure for the rocket age, but soon devolved into an intergalactic “Gilli

      1 min read

    • Article

      Wayne Is Back With Solo Show

      Jan 6, 2024

      Wayne Is Back With Solo Show
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dubliners

    4/5

    3,494 ratings108 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Such wonderful writing! The book gets better the further you go, because the stories create a vivid picture of a city and time. Although these are short stories, in one sense this is a novel. Makes me think of "Winesburg, Ohio" (which I just realized I need to add to my list of books read).
    • 5/5
      I reread this every few years and am always amazed. It culminates with The Dead, one of the most evocative stories I know. John Huston?s film of The Dead is similarly masterful.
    • 3/5
      Verzameling korte verhalen, nogal wisselend van niveau, geen meesterwerken maar wel gedegen vakmanschap. Gemeenschappelijk katholieke verwijzingen, band met Dublin. Telkens een schokkende gebeurtenis voor de betrokken persoon. Apart: langere essay The Dead, subliem-wervelend.
    • 3/5
      "The Dead" is worth the price of admission here. It is the longest and, by far in my view, the best story in Joyce's famous collection of glimpses of life in turn of 19th century Dublin.
    • 5/5
      Reread after many long years.

      "Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

      "The Dead" is so brilliant because it defies the reader's expectations at every turn, leading to a powerful culmination of these vignettes of life in Dublin. Gabriel Conroy suffers a kind of imposter syndrome. Even though he is loved and respected, he understands that there is a deeper attitude and emotional world to which he doesn't belong. What could be a petty reaction to his wife's sorrow transforms into a more general meditation on death.

      If Joyce has a larger project in his fiction, it is the attempt to connect the domestic and the cosmic. The retelling of The Odyssey in Ulysses is a perfect framework for this - it is all about the liminal state between the home and the larger world. Dubliners introduces this theme, as in each story it questions the meaning of home in terms of the literal hearth and the homeland of the Irish nation, the familiar trappings of Dublin city.
    • 4/5
      Not so pleasant to read, maybe, but engrossing. And, of course, "The Dead" Joyce's very famous story about life.
    • 4/5
      I'm sat here with a missed flight to Dublin in the Toronto airport and I really enjoyed the stories but I actually just want to be in the Irish National Gallery looking at Caravaggio's Taking of Christ instead of this place with weird French and a weirdly amazing duty free store. I guess the last story "The Dead" made me cry.

      Please pity like this.
    • 4/5
      Compilation of fifteen short stories set in early 1900s Dublin. The stories are vignettes of life. As with most short story collections, I liked some more than others, but they are all high quality. My favorites are A Painful Case, A Mother, and The Dead. The tone is quiet and melancholy. The writing is superb. I listened to the audio book, read masterfully by Jim Norton. The audio includes snippets of music recordings of the era, which added to the atmosphere.
    • 4/5
      Two things that struck me about these short stories. One, the writing is so vivid. Mr. Joyce focuses a tight lens on the details - and everything comes alive. Two, these stories are less stories in the sense of narrative than stories in the sense of catching a glimpse of a life - like looking through a window at a moment or two in an on-going story. The trick in this is that the window catches just that moment that tells the whole story.
    • 3/5
      Having read Ulysses and really enjoying that one, I wanted to like the Dubliners, but I was a little disappointed. The main issue I had was I really only like the well known stories collected in this book, with "The Dead" being my favorite. The rest of the stories seemed a little dry compared to Ulysses. I understand this book came before and this also connects with Ulysses. I'm hoping Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a little better.

      I should note I still like Joyce's writing style. He a little different and challenging for some, but I still like him. I would say this book was a lot easier than Ulysses, but Ulysses had more excitement and life to it I think.

      I should also note that even though the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition is over 300 pages long, the book it's self is about pages. That about 100 pages of notes and appendixes for those who need help understanding what Joyce is talking about.

      I like James Joyce, but I wouldn't recommend him to anyone unless you know what you're getting yourself into. Joyce isn't a fan of quotation marks, so it's hard to follow who or when someone is talking.
    • 4/5
      The stories are all very well-written. But I found the overall whole to be depressing.
    • 4/5
      Reason Read: Books from European Capitals, Dublin, ROOTThis is a work of short stories, published in 1914. They are stories of ordinary people living in Dublin. I've read several other James Joyce including Ulysses and finally got this one read which has been on my shelf since 2016. Many of his characters from this book appear in Ulysses. Glad I've read it and it would have been nice to read it alongside Ulysses though I doubt that I take that on again. But...maybe
    • 3/5
      I read (most of) these short stories for my OU course. This particular edition has an absurd number of 'helpful' footnotes, which I gradually learnt to ignore unless I was really struggling with the meaning. I came to this collection with the idea that Joyce was difficult to read, but these were not that difficult really, other than one about an election, which I gave up on.I can see that they are good, but I didn't particularly enjoy them and the mood was so depressing throughout.
    • 2/5
      In a traitorous reversal of my usual approach, I give this edition of Dubliners five stars, and the stories themselves two. Jeri Johnson has produced more or less an academic edition at an outrageously cheap price; her introduction is excellent--providing background to the writing and publishing of the work, and solid readings of a few stories; her notes are *extremely* extensive (to the point that she annotates words I'm pretty sure I knew in middle school). So, excellent job there.

      On the other hand, I couldn't help feeling that this edition was a distant descendent of The Dunciad. Not only because so much effort had been put into annotating words that more or less anyone reading this book should know, but because there seemed to be little point to the process of annotation. Sure, I appreciate being told that all of the landmarks and streets and shops are 'real,' and that occasionally they have some meaning that would otherwise have escaped me. But even with that meaning in my mind, very few of these stories are at all gripping. Without the stylistic hijinks of Ulysses, you're left with the bare fact that Joyce has no imagination, no ability to create plot, and not much of a mind for ideas. That doesn't matter when you're writing Ulysses. It matters a great deal when you're asking me to trawl through nearly 200 pages of dull, romanticized anecdotes about how x loves y but y betrays her; how w, x, y and z sit around drinking; and how people sometimes drive fast cars.

      In short, most of these pieces are dreadfully boring, at all levels of boredom: stylistically tepid, intellectually dull*, emotionally uninteresting.**

      There are, of course, exceptions. The Dead is fine. Eveline is fine melodrama. The Sisters towers above the rest of the collection. But at the end of the day, why would you read these things when you could read Henry James stories, which are better written, more intelligent, and not so obviously transcriptions of something that, you know, happened to me the other day on my way to the Liffey?

      If this book had been written by, say, James Giffon, not only would it not get the hundred pages of notation treatment. It wouldn't even be in print.

      *: the annotation tries to persuade you that these stories are not dull, and that Joyce is very cunningly using references to Dublin landmarks to place his characters. No doubt that seems very impressive when you don't know the landmarks, but consider that this is the early 20th century equivalent of putting your character in Toms and having her carry a Coach purse. It's not interesting in the slightest.
      **: I recognize that it was very hard for Joyce to publish a book with the word 'bloody' in it, and that he took a risk writing a story involving a kiddy fiddler, and so on. These facts should be noted by historians of censorship; they are not reasons for reading the stories.
    • 4/5
      I have finally got round to reading this classic.
      I loved his concise descriptive language.
      His characters were alive and believable.
      But I don't think I'm ready to tackle Ulysses yet!
    • 3/5
      I once got robbed in Dublin. It doesn't seem that much has changed. This is the first Joyce that I successfully slogged through. Bleak. Despairing. Half the characters are drunk and beating their families and the other half are wallowing in misery. Not recommended unless you are suicidally depressed and are looking for something to push you over the edge.
    • 3/5
      Sure, this collection was written by none other than James Joyce, but let's be perfectly honest: this book encapsulates what Thoreu was talking about when he stated the obvious: "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." After finishing this collection of failed lives, broken dreams, religious superstition, alcoholic excess, harsh memories, heartbreak, double-dealing, etc, I am going to need lots of ice cream to cleanse my palate of from the taste of a 'why even bother' mentality. And to think that my Irish grandmother was living in these very streets as this book was written! No wonder she left! Despair at its most relentless; as one character notes, "I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger." And he was one of the lucky ones!
    • 5/5
      A reread of Dubliners, which I haven't read in half a century. A first read of the Norton Critical Edition with its supplementary materials. Dubliners could get 5***** on its own, but the supplementary materials in this NCE are absolutely superb, even better than the usually excellent NCE material. Especially good were Howard Ehrlich's " 'Araby' in Context: The 'Splendid Bazaar,' Irish Orientalism, and James Clarence Mangan" and Victor Cheng's "Empire and Patriarchy in 'The Dead'."
    • 5/5
      I hadn't read Joyce's collection of short stories in years when I opened this paperback and began. I had forgotten how swiftly he renders his characters and how details he describes help define the characters and the movement in his stories. This collection stands the test of time and ha for a century.
    • 4/5
      Lovely collection of stories about Dublin.
    • 4/5
      Dubliners was my attempt to get into Joyce's work. I'd like to read Ulysses one day, but so far I haven't quite dared to tackle it. This is a collection of short stories that I hoped would gently introduce me to Joyce's writing. The stories are easy to understand and I enjoyed the prose. I'm definitely keeping his other work on my tbr list and would recommend Dubliners to anyone who wants a taste of James Joyce.
    • 3/5
      Sometimes there's a time not to read great works. I'm not sure why I chose the busy Christmas period to make my first foray into Joyce - to be quite honest it was hard going at times. Unlike what I've heard of Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, this collection of 15 stories was not arduous at all in terms of the style of writing, but I'm not a short story collection lover at the best of times, and I found myself often reading the book just for the sake of getting through it.Can I see what everyone raves about? Yes, I think I can. These stories were all about characterisation - subtleties and nuances which made each character quickly very believable and credible. It's just that clever as the writing and these characters were, I often found myself glazing over. I enjoyed the Dublin setting, and a number of the stories hooked me in, but many of them went nowhere, and sharply observant as the vignettes were they were often peppered with characters I didn't particularly like, which makes it hard for me to fall in love with writing even if it's from one of the so-called greats.I struggle with collections of short stories as they aren't long enough to suck me into page-turning addiction mode, and it can take me forever and day to get through a book like this as a result (despite it only being 250 pages long). Why did I pick this up then? Well, one of my late 2017 resolutions was to get back to doing more writing competitions again, and as I don't enjoy reading short stories I've been banging my head against a brick wall trying to write any that are a shade better than complete tripe. I wanted to examine the pace, the intros and the endings in particular, and how much plot to reveal.On that level the book did deliver, but there is a time for reading work like this, and I simply hadn't enough time or peace and quiet to give it the attention it deserved. This is a collection of stories that deserves to be studied, with attention given to the deftness of Joyce's literary art. I, on the other hand, was simply in the mood for reading for the sake of pure enjoyment.3 stars - I appreciated it, but felt like I dragged myself through much of it.
    • 4/5
      I finished the last story in this collection last night--Christmas Eve, coincidental with the story taking place on Christmas night. I have enjoyed every one of the tales in this book, the light brushstrokes with which each character and scene is painted, the reliance on simple human circumstances rather than action-heavy, moralistic plotlines. They rise from the page, leaving me with the sorts of emotions--wistfulness, annoyance, regret, joy--that I know well from real life. Beautiful.
    • 5/5
      Quite apart from the perfection of “The Dead,” death permeates the stories, vignettes, character sketches and emotional revues of Dubliners. A death is announced in the first sentence of the first story, “Sisters.” Whether in the foreground or mentioned in passing, deaths are just part of life for those who live in Dublin. When death gets title billing in that final story, it is hardly surprisingly to find Joyce reaching some kind of summative view on the matter with the snow now general across all of Ireland.This time reading Dubliners, I was struck by the “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” and, as ever, “Araby.” But also “The Boarding House,” and “A Mother.” Yet standing apart from all of them is “The Dead.” It is so much more complete, so much more complex, so much more human and humane, and sadder. It truly is the culmination.Highly recommended, every time you read it.
    • 4/5
      I began reading my lovely new Folio edition right out of the wrapper, and at first I couldn't quite see what the point of it all was. The first few stories, despite the clear brilliance of the writing---characters fully drawn in a couple sentences, images so sharp the smells of theriverthepubthesickroom come off the page--seemed to be all middle. The end of a story felt like the end of a chapter and I looked to pick up the scrap of thread that surely must be found in the pages to follow, but it never appeared. As so often happens with collections of short fiction, I connected with some of the pieces and not so much (or not at all) with others. I skipped one entirely after two paragraphs (that almost always happens too). But, and this will be no surprise to anyone who has read ANYTHING by Joyce (because it will have been "The Dead", 9 times out of 10), the final selection, "The Dead" just dropped me on my keister. It's perfectly made; the words are all Right-- there's never a lightning bolt when a lightning bug is what's wanted. It begins, it proceeds, it ends--in fact it ends with a paragraph so exquisite that, had I a drop of Irish blood in me, I would have been wailing. As it was, a tear was enough. My beloved cadre of 30-something current and former English professors (@lycomayflower, @geatland and others) have sung the praises of this story in my hearing over the last 10 years or so, and they don't exaggerate.Review written in August 2014
    • 5/5
      Melancholy stories of working class Irish men and their beleaguered women. Incredibly beautiful sentences about somewhat sad lives.
    • 5/5
      There is so very much which can be said about the power of Joyce's early style and the fact that it's equally present in the very shortest story of the collection, "Evaline," and the longest, most novelistic story, "The Dead." But many people have already said whatever I could say. Instead I will merely offer up the following; Dubliners taught me what a short story has the potential to be.
    • 4/5
      Like so many others, I read this collection in hopes of gathering momentum to attack Ulysses. I do think I acquired a better sense of his style, which is full portraiture of ordinary events. Little happens that qualifies as dramatic, yet the reader is still pulled along through the narratives. It is difficult to imagine why Joyce had such challenges getting this book published. But I suppose any group can blush at such an unromantic and truthful account of its members. Onward, I suppose, to Portrait.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyed reading these short stories - the first I have read of Joyce. I've the centennial edition and the pages are cut in a serrated style which. is. AMAZING.What I didn't like, however, was the "Index" at the back of the book explaining Irish colloquialisms, which I obviously didn't mind, but it also felt the need to refer to every street name and bible/religious tones - something I tired of checking halfway through the book. Man, did that drag.
    • 5/5
      Reading this collection was the first step of my master plan to tackle Mount Ulysses. Dubliners is said to be Joyce's most accessible work in addition to his earliest, so it seemed like the logical place to start. The reading is easy, but I was no further than the end of the first story, "The Sisters", when I turned to Sparknotes.com to ensure I wasn't missing something. Joyce purposely outlines and hints but doesn't fill in the whole puzzle; nothing much seems to happen, and in a sense that's the point. There's only what's on the surface, the theme rather than the events: how death makes us feel paralyzed by its strangeness, its simultaneous presence and lack thereof. In the subsequent stories he portrays other things besides death that unbalance us, leaving us faltering and disconnected: loss of innocence, exposure to illness or madness, first love, rebellion, intoxication, dull routine. Through these episodes we may gain insight that promises to guide us towards living our lives more fully, but insight alone is not enough. Positive change requires action but these characters are doomed to paralysis: they sentence themselves to understanding the truth of their chosen lot while doing nothing about it. Some stories hit painfully close to home, triggering my own regrets about opportunities I've passed on or the risks I didn't take.This collection has more unity than just its theme: there is also the locale of the title with which the theme is closely associated. These tales are meant to describe the plight of Dubliners and the Irish in general as a downtrodden lot. Some of the stories such as "Two Gallants" speak to this more directly than others through symbolism and mood. I still find them universally applicable. There's also a subtle aging in how the stories are ordered, the first being that of a child, up to the last about man who has been married for several years. Every age must contend with the same choice placed before them, to live or merely to exist. It isn't impossible to make the right choice, only improbable because our greatest obstacle is ourselves.