Whether one is reading them for the first time or re-reading old favorites, the titles in this series seem like old friends. Mature readers can revisit timeless treasures; young, struggling, or reluctant readers are given a format that helps them connect to the great body of American and world literature.
This remarkable collection of stories was described by Joyce himself as a series of chapters in the moral history of his community. In fact, it is the scope of life that Joyce has limned in these stories -- from the opening tale, "The Sisters", in which a boy is confronted with death as he overhears the conversation of his elders; through "The Dead", wherein through the chance singing of a song, a husband learns of a long-ago romance in his wife's life. While the geographic boundary of the fifteen stories is middle-class Catholic Dublin, the artistic boundary is set only by Joyce's far-reaching genius.
