Dubliners

By: James Joyce

Narrated by: Joe Phoenix

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.

The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences a life-changing self-understanding or illumination, and the idea of paralysis where Joyce felt Irish nationalism stagnated cultural progression, placing Dublin at the heart of this regressive movement. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.

A collection of fifteen short stories:

The Sisters

An Encounter

Araby

Eveline

After the Race

Two Gallants

The Boarding House

A Little Cloud

Counterparts

Clay

A Painful Case

Ivy Day in the Committee Room

A Mother

Grace

The Dead

PLEASE NOTE: when you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

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Great stories, terrible narration

I first thought the narrator was an AI as so many words were mispronounced, no Irish accent...and other errors like starting misspoke words over. There was little inflection in the voice too, and the story was hard to follow because of it.

Poorly Read - Period

More like a high school level project than professional product.
Stories OK but either read directly off a prompter or a poor attempt at AI.
Diction sounded like a machine, chopping sentences in the middle and missing inflections to the point where it was difficult to follow the story and, despite this being a classic, ruined the experience for me. I won't even get into the mispronounced words.
I made it to late in Chapter 3 before throwing in the towel.
Have gone as far as to delete this from my reader library. Will try later from a different orator.
James Joyce would be pissed at this one.

Terrible narrator

Terrible performance. Would never select this narrator again for an English language book. Frequent mispronunciation of many, many words, no effort made to capture tone, language and cadence intended by the author. Sounds like a reluctant high schooler forced to read aloud in class. No distinction of dialog, speakers or even flow dictated by punctuation. Certainly no Dublin or Irish accent.