One of the most perfect readings you’ll ever hear

The tale is incomparable. Hundreds of characters live and breathe. Jim Norton has an amazing vocal range that serves a wide variety of literary styles and parodies. He brings, humour, musicality and insight even to passages that are completely bonkers. I’ve just listened for the third time , dazzled and exhilarated by Joyce. It would be hard to experience Ulysses so vividly straight off the page. Marcella also delivers Molly Bloom’s final monologue peerlessly.

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Wonderful book, brilliantly read.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

It helped that I'd read this book previously and had done some study on how it has been interpreted. Once you have a grounding you really appreciate the full force of its brilliance.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Bloom: an outsider, cuckold and under-dog, but persistent and dogged, he wins through in the end.

What does Jim Norton bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Jim Norton's (and Marcella Reardon) reading adds immensely to an appreciation. Wonderful characterisation, pace, humour, accents and invective. It is difficult to imagine it will ever be bettered.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The last section as Molly describes why she married and has stuck with Bloom. But almost every chapter has some brilliant passage.

Any additional comments?

If you've never read it before do at least skim the basics of the story first so you appreciate the basic structure - and then plunge in and enjoy and imbibe the language and scatological humour. Every reading will bring out more subtleties and enjoyment. This really is one of those books worth coming back to. I will certainly be returning to this reading!

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15 people found this helpful

Great listen!

I thought the audiobook was great, I chose to read along as I listened because Joyce writes in such a way that you need to see as well as actually hear the words to get the full effect. I had been putting off reading it for ages because everyone said how difficult it is but in fact this audiobook is a wonderful accompaniment 10/10 would recommend.

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12 people found this helpful

Whispering most of the time when narrating

Difficult to listen. I had to turn the volume up in order to hear the narrating part, as the narrator, for some reasons, decided to 'whisper' most of the time when narrating. This creates a problem, as conversations were generally read in a normal/shouting loud voice. In other words, it 'shouts' whenever there was a conversation. Very unpleasant.

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9 people found this helpful

Brilliant

Brilliant and beautiful. The best novel of the 20th century. Listen to it! It's much easier than reading it.

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2 people found this helpful

Every word in the English Language?

Fascinating vocabulary, spellbinding and capturing. Strangely addictive. Not for the feint hearted, you have to stick with it!

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A day in the life....

his sprawling, enigmatic, confounding, loved and over the years controversial work tells the day of the life, specifically June 16, 1904, of two men, Stephen Daedalus and Harold Bloom, as they make their way across the city of Dublin. This infamous work, a classic of Irish literature, beloved by countless, is, after 52 years as a fairly avid and wide ranging reader, nevertheless new to me.
It is well known for how it follows the Homeric path in Ulysses, the stages of the mythic journey, taking in Telemachus, Nestor, the Lotus Eaters, Calypso, the Sirens, Charybdis, the winding rocks, Penelope and more. But these are retold and recast with the clothes of everyday life in Dublin 1904 in all its minutiae.
It is also well known for closely following and reconstructing the actual geography and features of the Dublin of its day.
It's a book that people wrestle with their entire lives. It uses different narrative voices and styles; the mock heroic, stream of consciousness, journalistic, monologue. Some of it continues to defy scholarly analysis and final interpretation. It is a work that has defeated many and yet keeps bringing others back continually for more.
It is well known for its scatological detail, vivid descriptions of the most basic of human functions and of the sexual life. It takes defecation, masturbation, ejaculation, physical decay and death, in its stride as part of its duty to see human life in all its messiness for a day. It is this openness that got it banned on initial publication and held back from full circulation in public libraries until the 1970's.
It can be grim, infuriating, mesmerising, funny, numbing. It has ambivalent views on Church and state and is slippery when you try and grasp just want the writer means, thinks and believes (but we do have a lot of clues from the work itself, Joyce's correspondence and other work etc.

It is a book to completely lose yourself in. Do read around the work, read the critics to deepen your understanding, but leave your mind open so that the book speaks directly, unfiltered, to you. Don't worry about at times not following it, just enjoy the sound and feel of the words.
I listened to Jim Norton and Marciella Riordan's audio-book which I recommend unreservedly as a way to dive into this work, to relax and just go with the flow of the words. You will get the shape of the story, and the characters will come to life. Some of the characters feel intensely vivid to me. I wanted to slap Buck Mulligan and I f I have a dislike of Stephen Daedalus simply because of the conceited priggishness of refusing to pray with his dying mother. Did he think this act would suddenly convert him to Catholicism?
This is not a brave humanistic act, but a shallow conceited one, a refusal to grant a dying woman peace because it would hurt his feelings. I never got over this.

Molly Bloom is a hoot. It's little wonder, with the energy and zest and humour and forgiveness both of self and other, loaded in her final monologue, that many people find her final chapter to be their favourite.

Leo Bloom I found a more relatable everyman, a comedic, sympathetic, empathetic man who struggles to look his wife's adultery squarely in the face, and battling against the seething antisemitism that is present in the novel as voiced by many of the characters.
But there I go, any attempt to explain or define leads you into vast cavernous spaces to get lost in.

There's a cast of thousands. The city is a character, the novel teems with voices and lives. look out for the stammering sailor, a favourite minor character of mine, at the Cabman's stand. His stuff is very funny.

Watch out for the extended dreamscape of Night-town (Circe), as thoughts and memories take on a sometime terrifying life of their own.

An amazing work, and this is an amazing telling of it.

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This is beautiful - do give this a go.

Any additional comments?

Excellently read, wonderfully written. I listened to this one through twice and will certainly go back and do it again soon.

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Brilliantly read

If you do not want to read this book, this is the way to absorb it. Much of the hard work done for you.
On the plus side; beautiful language, some chapters are compelling, last 2 chapters exquisite. Earthy funny and strangely modern for today.
On the down side far too long, difficult to follow, tedious.

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A surprisingly enjoyable treat!

So much in this, and I’m glad I stuck with it. I was quite meticulous and studious at first and then I relaxed into it and just let it roll over me! Loved the narration and think this is the perfect way to enjoy this classic!!

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