New York Post
One of the classiest productions ever released . . .
Brazen Head
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.
Bookpage
Even better than reading Joyce is having Joyce read to you, and the readers here are superb...
Philadelphia Inquirer
Aha! So this is what Joyce is supposed to sound like.
Publishers Weekly
Frank and Malachy McCourt and 13 Irish actors bring Joyce's short stories to life in this well-produced audiobook. None of the readers employ a thick accent in the narrative portions, but for dialogue they let their imitative talents shine and their Irish lilts bloom. Brendan Coyle and Charles Keating, reading "A Little Cloud" and "Grace" respectively, give such wonderful expression to the idiosyncrasies of every individual voice that the listener is never confused even when numerous men are talking. Joyce wrote only sparingly in actual dialect, but most of the readers interpret his intentions freely and successfully. Fionnula Flanagan is perfect reading "A Mother," her voice shifting easily between prim and proper tones and fiery indignation punctuated with little sighs. It helps that Joyce's writing is so masterful that when Flanagan and the two other actresses read the three stories that revolve around women, their words sound utterly natural. Not all the performances are on the same level-Stephen Rea's cold, somber voice is apt for the meditative beginning and ending sections of the collection's most famous story, "The Dead," but too flat for the central description of a lively party. This audiobook creates the atmosphere of a fireside storytelling session that will hold any listener in rapt attention. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
**** In BCL3. This very legible and complete reprint of the Grant Richards edition of 1914 is priced at so low a price that stores will resent selling it. Salute to Dover. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
From the Publisher
Keri Walsh’s Broadview edition of Dubliners will deepen and enliven any reader’s experience of Joyce’s book. Included here are extensive appendices of primary materials that contextualize Joyce’s fictional world in terms of Ireland’s social, cultural, religious, and economic history, and in terms of the book’s troubled publication history, its early reception, and its place in literary history. Walsh’s introductory essay lays out the stakes of Joyce’s fraught relationship with Dublin and its denizens with clarity, concision, wit, and readability. Nowhere else have I read Joyce’s early life and work so essentially distilled, and rarely have I read Dubliners so artfully described. I expect Walsh’s Broadview edition of Dubliners to be around for a long time to come.” — Michael Rubenstein, Stony Brook University
“Keri Walsh, as we already know from her collection of Sylvia Beach’s letters, is an archivist who blends the conscience of an ethnographer with the touch of a lover. She has achieved something genuinely exhilarating in this edition of Dubliners — transformed us into Joyce’s contemporaries while simultaneously renewing the book as a contemporary text, richly teachable and learnable, for twenty-first century readers, students, and scholars.” — Saikat Majumdar, author of Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire
“In an age when anthologized literary may give students the impression that the texts they are given to study arrived already canonized, Walsh’s approach—the provision of text, subtext, pretext, and context—allows an appreciation of the contingency of both creation and reputation, and is therefore an approach full of merit.” —Stephen Whittaker, James Joyce Literary Supplement
“Walsh’s entertaining prose moves competently and gracefully among many aspects of Dublin life and Irish history that have an immediate bearing on the stories … Deftly juggling and ordering so many layers of concerns, Walsh’s essay gives and ideal opening performance, drawing out questions and alerting readers to the details and controversies of the stories while refraining from editorializing or providing a simple, singular answer. In this sense, it makes a nicely polished critical looking glass that opens up many reflective possibilities for readers of Dubliners … The stories are evenly and skillfully annotated by Walsh; the level and depth of her notes also sustain the historical and cultural contexts developed in the critical essay and supplementary materials … Her annotative style is disciplined and concise, providing just the right amount of information about archaic vocabulary or arcane allusions. At their best, her annotations show readers the active interpretive choices that confront them in particular moments.” — Greg Winston, James Joyce Quarterly
John Kelly
In Dubliners, Joyce’s first attempt to register in language and fictive form the protean complexities of the ‘reality of experience,’ he learns the paradoxical lesson that only through the most rigorous economy, only by concentrating on the minutest of particulars, can he have any hope of engaging with the immensity of the world.”
Atlantic Monthly
Joyce renews our apprehension of reality, strengthens our sympathy with our fellow creatures, and leaves us in awe before the mystery of created things.”
Kliatt
Davidson gives full-voiced narration to the vigorous characters of Joyce’s Dublin and convincing interpretation to what Joyce called ‘the moral history of his community.’”
authors of Dubliners: Text and Criticism Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz
It is in the prose of Dubliners that we first hear the authentic rhythms of Joyce the poet…Dubliners is, in a very real sense, the foundation of Joyce’s art. In shaping its stories, he developed that mastery of naturalistic detail and symbolic design which is the hallmark of his mature fiction.”
Guardian
With just one collection of stories, Joyce left his mark on almost every short-story writer who followed him
J. G. Ballard
In Joyce's eyes, Dublin is the whole world
Carol Birch
Joyce made me want to write. His use of language was dazzling, impressionistic but controlled, rhythmic, diverse, achingly lyrical. He made people live on the page. He was serious, hilarious, sensitively romantic, filthy and absolutely honest
NOVEMBER 2015 - AudioFile
Narrator Donal Donnelly seems to slip on his tweed coat and walk into the Irish mist, so spot-on is his delivery of Joyce's homage to his hometown. Donnelly shifts from character to character with ease and brings a playful attitude to all the stories. An overarching claustrophobic tone, appropriate to the works, is offset by Donnelly's portrayals of the colorful characters. As the stories unfold, Donnelly uses his ample narration techniques to become a pleasing guide for this journey of exploration. R.O. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine