For Irish Literature, Spring 2026
I read as part of my Irish Literature course back in February/March but have not until now set aside the time to write a proper review here! I loved this, of course. Working my way through even just a little bit of the Joyce oeuvre (Portrait, Dubliners) was such an incredibly enriching and rewarding experience. As an Irish-Catholic who attended Catholic school for the entirety of my primary and secondary years (and was very adjacent to a certain Jesuit high school and a certain Christian Brothers school in my home city), Joyce's observations about the minutiae of life in Catholic school and its influence on your psyche were perhaps my favorite parts of the novel (or, at least, the ones that resonated with me the most deeply). Joyce nailed the paranoia, obsessions and compulsions over one's morality, and the intense pendulum-swinging between decadence and asceticism that Catholic school engenders. It's both comforting and disconcerting that, over a century later, those forces are still at play.
Aside from the personal reasons, the prose was rich and beautiful and hit every single note I could possibly ask it to. I'm a convert to the Joycean compound. I miss Dublin so very much.
Great review! Any chance you'd post the reading list for the class?
For sure! I'll post it as a list but for now here's the gist of it, in order: Selected poems of Yeats (much of The Rose) Synge - Riders to the Sea Joyce - Dubliners Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Eavan Boland, selected poems Rooney - Intermezzo Wish the course had more breadth (notably, there was no Heaney, O'Casey, Behan, etc) but we had so much in-depth discussion and an awesome professor, easily one of my favorite classes I've taken in college!
Thanks! There was a thread about Irish lit the other day that got me interested so this seemed like perfect timing lol