Dubliners [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

James Joyce (Author), Malachy McCourt (Reader), Dan O'Herlihy (Reader), Patrick McCabe (Reader), Ciaran Hinds (Reader), T.P. McKenna (Reader), Brendan Coyle (Reader), Rejoycing Company (Reader), Camogie Inc. (Reader)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0694523003 | ISBN-13: 978-0694523009 | Publication Date: March 1, 2000

Dubliners - James Joyce's stories of his native homeland - performed by a cast of 15 different actors originating from Ireland.  Unabridged.

The fifteen stories that make up this brilliant audio roam over a human landscape that stretches from the bleakest of despair to the most blinding of epiphanies.  First published in 1914, the stories are as lucid and accessible as they are memorable poignant.

As you listen to the cast of internationally famous stage and screen actors perform Dubliners, both the spiritually deadening atmosphere that drove Joyce from his homeland and the irresistible emotional pull it always kept on him to the end of his days become heartbreakingly beautiful.

Dubliners is an audio experience that will only grow in richness with each time you listen. 

The stories and performers are:

Sisters - Frank McCourt

An Encounter - Patrick McCabe

Araby - Colm Meaney

Eveline - Dearbhla Molloy

After the Race - Dan O'Herlihy

Two Gallants - Malachy McCourt

The Boarding House - Donal Donnelly

A Little Cloud - Brendan Coyle

Counterparts - Jim Norton

Clay - Sorcha Cusack

A Painful Case - Ciaran Hinds

Ivy Day in the Committee Room - T.P. McKenna

A Mother - Fionnula Flanagan

Grace - Charles Keating

The Dead - Stephen Rea

 

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Joyce's classic has been recorded before, of course, but in this new version, each of the 15 stories will be read by a different person, including writers Frank McCourt, Malachy McCourt, and Patrick McCabe, and actors Ciaran Hinds and Colm Meaney.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

". . . the stories have a certain beauty, especially in a new recording from Caedmon Audio. Dubliners will endure not only because it's Joyce, but also because of the people performing it. The list of narrators reads like an Irish who's-who . . . It's worth every minute." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"Aha! So this is what Joyce is supposed to sound like." -- -The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Caedmon has done a brilliant job in matching each story to a reader, resulting in fifteen readings as unique and personal as the stories themselves, each one glowing with individuality, color, and nuance." -- The Brazen Head

"Even better than reading Joyce is having Joyce read to you, and the readers here are superb..." -- -Bookpage

"One of the classiest productions ever released . . . " -- -The New York Post

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Caedmon (March 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0694523003
• ISBN-13: 978-0694523009
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 4.4 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,189,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Books on Cassette > Authors, A-Z > ( J ) > Joyce, James

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Joyce guy might amount to something, December 5, 2001

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dubliners (Mass Market Paperback)

I wish I could stand up here and make some pretentious claim that this is the "greatest short story collection of all time!" or something along those lines but I generally don't read short stories or short story collections. But I like James Joyce and so figured what the heck, I made it through Ulysses, this should be a cakewalk. So I read it and if you were wowed by Ulysses then this should reconfirm Joyce's genius for you and that he could do other writing besides that wacky postmodern stuff (before there really was a postmodern). If you're not a Joyce fan most of these (other than a notable handful) probably won't convert you. In essence these are Joyce's portraits of the people of Dublin and the city itself, most of these stories are character sketches, mostly following a few people around as they go about their lives. They were written over a period of time so the quality does vary a bit, the first few stories I don't find anything special but by the time you get to around "Two Gallants" the quality takes a sharp spike upward and stays there right until the end. The prose is fairly easy to follow, the worst part is deciphering all the Irish names and slang that are used liberally for obvious reasons . . . if anything it showed me how two cultures who technically speak the language can sound so different. The stories run the gamut of the "slice of life" genre, if such a thing exists, showing people from all walks of life and all classes of society, showing them as realistically as Joyce could, all their fears and foibles, warts and all. At his best he makes you live the lives of the characters and immerses you deeply into the city of Dublin, probably more than any group of short stories has ever brought a city to life. If you're still not convinced, then take this advice, buy the book for the sake of only one story, the last story in the collection, "The Dead" . . . simply put it is one of the best pieces of short fiction I have ever read. It starts off mundanely enough at a party but by the time the characters leave the party and go back to their hotel the writing becomes something almost otherworldly and Joyce starts writing some of the most evocative prose ever put on paper. If the last few pages don't send chills down your spine, then you must be dead. That's the only explanation. After that gem, everything else is just icing on the cake. Simply put, everyone should read "The Dead" and if you're the type of person whose fancy shall be struck by the rest of the stories here, so much the better.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rewarding for those willing to tackle it, December 26, 1999

By 

T. Martin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dubliners (Paperback)

Having grown up in a small town much like Joyce's Dublin, this book has a special significance for me. I've seen so many people from my town graduating from high school without really understanding that there is an entire world outside the place they grew up and lacking the ambition to go explore it. I fear many of them will spend their lives "getting by" in a job they hate, raising children who will inevitably do the same thing. Joyce's "Dubliners" depicts this cycle with as much complexity and compassion as any author I've read.

In an age where the most publicized fiction tends to be simple-minded and genre-bound, it's refreshing to come across a writer with Joyce's complexity. "Dubliners" is so rich in its intellectual and symbolic atmosphere that many readers may be put off by the overall weight of the prose. The writing is so thick with metaphorical contexts that the literal content of the story occasionally becomes obscured, which can be frustrating for those not used to reading Joyce. Yet, while difficult, "Dubliners" is far from impossible to decipher, and although these stories function well as a whole, they are also more or less self-contained, which makes "Dubliners" easier to get through than Joyce's other works(it's a lot easier to take on a ten page short story than a 600+ page novel like "Ulysses" or "Finnegan's Wake"). For readers who are new to Joyce, this would be a good place to start.

A final note: since this book is old enough to be considered a "classic," there are a plethora of editions available from various publishers. I own the Vintage edition (ISBN: 0679739904). Not only is it a quality printing (not that cheap newspaper ink that rubs off on your fingers), it also contains about a hundred pages of criticism at the end that help shed light on Joyce's often illusive themes. Normally I shun forewards and afterwards (I like to think I've read enough to discover a story's theme on my own), but in the case of Joyce I found that a push in right direction can mean the difference between enjoyment and frustration.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dear dirty Dublin, October 30, 2003

By 

Rocco Dormarunno (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dubliners (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

As a young man, James Joyce abandoned his hometown of Dublin, and yet, he never wrote about any other place. He had also rejected Catholicism, and yet all his characters are dominated by it. DUBLINERS, Joyce's collection of short stories which set the standard for the genre, is filled with characters who come to terrible revelations (which he called "epiphanies") about how their lives had been scarred by the provincialism of Dublin, the divisiveness of its politics, and the oppression of religion. By extension, this is how Joyce percieved humanity at the dawn of modernism.

The stories range from the psychologially simple ("Counterparts" and "A Little Cloud") to the extraordinarily complex ("A Painful Case" and "The Dead"). But what is common throughout is the feel for Dublin just after the turn of the last century. The readers see the cobblestones, the chimneys, the trams and carts, the churches, and the street lamps. More importantly, the readers feel the tensions underlying the public smiles and infrequent bursts of confidence that the characters exhibit.

The pinnacle of this collection is "The Dead". A novella, actually, "The Dead" encompasses everything: politics, religion, art, journalism, history, love, and the inevitability of death rendering all worldly things meaningless. This doesn't mean the story is a downer: this death is necessary to making a fresh start. The ending of "The Dead" has been interpreted in hundreds of ways. However, there is no denying that as Joyce "pulls back the camera" from the Conroy's hotel room to the universe above, the writing swells to its most beautiful. To me, this is a movement toward the future, toward change, leaving the living dead behind to a more spiritual life on Earth.

Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points.