“Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.” - The Dead

Unlike with Murakami’s short stories, I have decided not to individually review and rate each of Joyce’s stories in ‘Dubliners’. This is because they didn’t feel too unique or separate from one another to really have drastically different remarks to make on each. Joyce captures the small tragedies of everyday lives in Dublin, with a very empty and sorrowful feeling across the collection. It grants importance to the lives of the everyman, but here in the short form I feel like Joyce’s style suffered. He takes a long time to set scenes, deeply engaged in a sense of place, and builds up characters and plot very slowly and as a consequence these 10 or 15 page stories felt like they were over before anything had happened or really began. I think this is why ‘The Dead’ is regarded widely as the best in the collection, and I would be inclined to agree, as it was much longer (about 50 pages) and had a chance to gain a sense of itself before concluding, though I felt ‘A Painful Case’ also was a lot more well-rounded than the rest of the collection despite its shorter length. I did however prefer ‘Dubliners’ to ‘Ulysses’, maybe thats down to reading the short stories whilst in Dublin and therefore being fully immersed in Joyce’s locality so prevalent within his writing, but also because it didn’t drag nearly as much though the level of distance from plot was equal in each. Maybe ‘A Portrait of an Artist’ will be the sweet spot for this writing style where the plot won’t drag but will have a chance to properly begin.