New Dubliners: Original Stories Celebrating 100 Years of Joyce's Dubliners

by Oona Frawley (Editor), Maeve Binchy, Dermot Bolger

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the year in which Joyce penned his famous -collection, New Dubliners presents eleven deeply human, evocative stories set in the Irish capital, by such award-winning and leading Irish authors as Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Joseph O'Connor, Bernard MacLaverty, and Frank McGuinness.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

152 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2006

About the author

Born in NYC to Irish-actor parents, Oona has lived in Ireland full-time since completing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She has held post-doctoral fellowships at Queen's University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin, and has lectured in the Department of English at Maynooth University since 2008. Oona's research interests lie in Irish Studies, particularly of the late 19th and 29th centuries, in Memory and Trauma Studies, and in ecocriticism. A Hennessy Award nominee, her first novel, Flight, was published in 2014 and was nominated for an Irish Book Award in the 'newcomer' category.Oona is currently writing a book on postcolonial ecocriticism, comparing Irish, American, Australian and New Zealand literature for attitudes towards land development, waste, and the environment.

(from https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/eng...)

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this collection five years ago, around COVID lockdown, but I remember nothing about it. I made a note that it was OK but that is like saying to the question 'How was your day?' that you 'Had no complaints' which means it was unmemorable. Even bad stories lkeave a trace, even if it is foul, but to be indifferent!? Who has time for that?

I am giving it three star because I didn't hate it.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

An updated Dubliners, or perhaps more aptly put, a homage. The stories themselves are uneven with some real gems interspersed amongst those that left me cold. The stories have a heartbreaking preoocupation with old people being put away, dying or trudging by themselves in deep lonliness, the best of them being Roddy Doyle`s account of a man who without much concious thought has withdrawn socially and is now trapped and alone.

Two other standouts were "Benny gets the blame" which brought a much needed elan into the collection as one of the few authors not (understandbly) cowed by the challenge. The other story I enjoyed was more of an update of one of Joyces stories about a man about town who with age has become a bit of a tragedy.

I was left with the thought that there are not many countries or cities in the world who can effortlessly marshal that much talent and not even touch their premier authors.

[Patty Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough read. Each story “celebrates” the sordidness of Dublin life. Really violates the joyful sense of the Irish that the rest of us tend to have.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had seen reviews of The New Dubliners, reviews that caught my eye and made me mildly curious to pick up the book despite my rather intense hatred of James Joyce. In fact, in order to better compare and contrast between the original and the new versions, I even re-read James Joyce’s Dubliners (confirming, once and for all, that I cannot STAND James Joyce). Still, I recognized one or two of the authors who contributed to the New Dubliners and decided to still go ahead and read it.

It’s not my favorite anthology of short stories. There were some stories that I just didn’t get and there was some that I think were trying too hard to be clever and significant and there were a couple of stories that were good but that I most likely will not spend a lot of time thinking about now that I am done reading them. Having said that, there were four stories that really stood out and justified the time I spent reading the book. They are:

Recuperation by Roddy Doyle
An elderly man is encouraged by his doctor to begin walking as a means of getting exercise after a heart attack. The reader follows his thoughts as he walks, reflecting on his increasing withdrawal from social interaction after his children had grown and left the house, and his bewildered wondering about why his wife has moved out of the bedroom. He desperately wants to ask her what caused the rift, there having been no fight, no affair, no crisis to trigger the change, but fears that if he upsets the delicate balance of their relationship it would trigger a chain of events that he is unprepared to deal with. I thought this story was an interesting look at a family quietly in crisis and suffering from a lack of communication.

The Assessment by Bernard MacLaverty
A story of an elderly woman whose son has brought her to a nursing home for an assessment to see if she can still live on her own. The woman is fixated on the fact that she is being judged and is frantic to know what she needs to do to pass the “test.” Gradually, the reader picks up on more and more signs of her confused and paranoid mental state and a fascinating and touching portrait of a woman descending into dementia begins to emerge.


All that Matters by Maeve Binchy
A young girl falls under the influence of her sophisticated aunt who visits once a year from the States. Through her aunt’s eyes, the girl examines her family and her home and finds it wanting. She sets out to recreate herself in her aunt’s image but an unplanned pregnancy forces her to seek out her Aunt in America. There she finds that her Aunt’s life is all smoke and mirrors. Shocked by this revelation, she re-examines her priorities and discovers what is potentially beautiful about what she has been looking down on.

James Joyce would have detested this story (which might explain a lot of why I liked it). In a lot of ways, it is similar to Eveline, a story in the original Dubliners. Joyce’s character has a chance to escape Dublin and make a “better” life for herself. The fact that she doesn’t, that her fear and doubt keeps her life stagnated and unchanged is a major failing in Joyce’s eyes. He would have approved of the aunt’s “do what you need to do” attitude. But Binchy turns the Joyce philosophy on its head, revealing that despite the fact that the aunt managed to escape Dublin and has fooled the world into believing that she is better than her roots, she is not any happier for that and the although the young girl will have her freedom and prospects limited by having an illegitimate child and will likely live with her course, rough around the edges family for the rest of her life, she can find joy in it.

Benny Gets The Blame by Clare Boylan
Benny Gets the Blame is one of the funniest short stories I have read in a while. When young boys, having seen Ben Hur one too many times, decide to recreate the chariot race from that movie with baby carriages (with the babies still inside), the end results are pretty funny.

[Vivian Valvano · Rating 3 out of 5]

FIRST OF ALL, THE EDITOR IS THE EXCELLENT OONA FRAWLEY, NOT IVY BANNISTER! I DON'T KNOW HOW NEW ISLAND BOOKS OR PEGASUS BOOKS HAS ALLOWED ERRONEOUS EDITORIAL INFORMATION ON THE BOOK'S RECORD! IVY BANNISTER IS THE AUTHOR OF ONE OF THE STORIES!

3.5 stars. I think this is a far, far, superior collection than the Thomas Morris edited DUBLINERS 100. Frawley's pithy introduction captures the essence of each story in a sentence, which is no mean feat. I don't believe all the stories are effective, but I was greatly impressed by some of them. On an initial reading, the stories by Joseph O'Connor, Dermot Bolger, and Desmond Hogan struck me as the best in the collection. Each of them channels, utilizes, alludes to, recognizes Joyce in its own individualistic, idiosyncratic way. O'Connor's "Two Little Clouds" is the only one that (somewhat) revamps a specific source story from DUBLINERS, but there's no doubt that his people bespeak contemporary Dublin, even as they echo Joyce's "dear, dirty" one. Bolger creates a poignant narrator with which to channel Bloom and seminal parts of ULYSSES for particularly good reasons; that is successful homage to Joyce's Dubliners, indeed. Hogan's strength lies in the sheer lyricism of and language-play in his presentation. So: Three excellent stories out of 11 in an experiment that I am glad was undertaken, and that could have easily fallen apart. The others (again, I emphasize that this is on a first reading) range from pretty good all the way through ineffective.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book about how Dubliners view themselves. Published in 2005, this book is now a time capsule in a way that probably was not intended. It aimed to connect the pre-crisis Ireland with its pre-century forebear via Joyce, to highlight similarities and differences between the 'modern' (read 'rich') Ireland of 2005 and its 1905 ('poor') predecessor. Reading it 2012, the whole project appears skewed, almost startling in its innocence of the near future from which it was created, let alone the deep past. [return][return]Of course, comparisons with Joyce's literary ability are futile. This is not the work of a single master. What it is, is a solid collection of good stories that all attempt, in some way, to evoke Joyce - either by reference, pastiche or extension. As with all collections of this nature, some stories are more successful than others, but all are entertaining. [return][return]The stand out, for me, is 'Martha's Streets' by Dermot Bolger, which is the best explanation by far that I have read of the intimate and subjective appeal of Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

[Cindy]

As a class we read James Joyce's Dubliners before heading off to Ireland for 12 days. While in Ireland, we were tasked with reading New Dubliners. Being able to relate the three made for a deeper understanding and a more complete visit to Ireland. It was interesting to see how New Dubliners was similar and different to Joyce's Dubliners. I would strongly recommend to anyone planning to visit Ireland to read both books in the order I did, and really think about and compare both books to each other as well as to Dublin itself.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

i 'tink' some of it was lost on me via jargon, and although there were a couple of really gorgeous lines and i could feel the city through them, i was not so impressed overall. granted, maybe this is because i'd rather discover dublin in the streets than in the books!

[Mary Gremmler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to compare to Joyce's "Dubliners"

[Gribdot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent stories. I wish I had a class or book group so I could spend some time discussing how they comment on Dubliners.

[kp · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a collection, so some are better than others, but only one story, Column McCann's, resonated.

[Kemi Bon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all the stories moved me but each had something special to give and I took gladly.