Paper and Porcelain’s Reviews > Dubliners > Status Update

Seeking out a distraction from the slow-to-leave stresses with speed - a reference to the drug - on fast-to-outlive swiftness of artificial advancement and chain-injecting arenaline rush withdrawals. Kidnapped in kiddish shenanigans slipping away against the fingers, pedestrians of Dublin’s polarity where half waltzes out of bed and the rest rushes back on board are cast to show the former growing beyond whimsy.

Each story incandescently bats at the juvenile spirit persevering in elderly bodies - homerunning balls of generation-gap morals and ethics from a young perspective in chaptered aspects, firstly friendship and secondly falling in love. The eloquence of geographical and sensorial contexts continue to escalate for readers to gradually mature in their sympathies of new and old people.

Despite the spiritual distance, Joyce garnishes the book’s entry point with scenes, scents, and textures that are so fragrant and pungent, smooth and coarse - individually interpretable but similarly sense-arousing - that you are practically present in the run-down, low-density Irishtown’s distinct character regardless of who you are.