Dubliners

"I was a young soldier on an abandoned mountain in Sinai, in 1973. It was 41 degrees Celsius, and I was reading about a holiday evening dinner, with duck on the table and snow outside. It was so far away from me, an Irish home, all so foreign and unfamiliar. I was fascinated by it. It is the perfect story—you can almost touch the characters, and yet it is told from a remote point of view, from a distance but not without affection. Anyone who writes knows how difficult it is to find the perfect distance. The ending of the story is heart-breaking: the scene when Gabriel, so full of love and passion, is convinced that he and his wife Gretta will make love later that night. And as she starts speaking about the young man she loved he realises he never really knew his wife and how stupid and shallow he was in her eyes…. How little do we know about the people we are so close to? There is always this air of mystery; something will remain enigmatic. And now, years after my first reading of this book, I can see that behind every human story is another and yet another…this is the human archaeology. A good story that radiates layer upon layer, and each acts on us without our knowledge."

"First it was "Dubliners," those tender, seemingly simple stories, set in the city I had come to work in and to be able to identify with the lonely, marginal people that he wrote about."

"It’s “useful” (you like that word) to provide models of the form: Chekhov, Joyce’s “Dubliners,” etc."

"Dubliners, by James Joyce. I was, I think, 12, when I was given it for my birthday."

"William Trevor. Pritchett. “Dubliners.” Alice Munro. Deborah Eisenberg. Ann Beattie. Donald Barthelme. Mavis Gallant. Chekhov. There are some awfully good story collections around."