Book Review: The Dead

I’ve spent some time lately reading some older and more famous books. One that seemed fascinating was a short story by James Joyce called The Dead .

Author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet. He was also well-known as a literary critic. Wikipedia says he is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. I’ve spent time in Ireland over the years, and I’ve seen a lot of tributes to him both up in Dublin, and also around Kildare. He’s treated as somewhat of a national treasure.

The Dead

I was fascinated to read this book as I had some limited time available, and it’s short. I decided to listen to it on Audible while driving around recently. It was only 1 hour and 25 minutes.

The story is about a man named Gabriel Conrol and his relationship with his family and friends. In particular, it spends the first half of the book dwelling on he and his wife going to a family Christmas party. (It’s held every year on Twelfth Night). During the party, he needs to make a speech and he is particularly worried about this. He’s a teacher and he’s worried that the people listening won’t get the academic references in his speech.

I loved the way that Gabriel talked about his book reviewing work, where he enjoyed receiving the books for review more than the paltry amount of money he got for reviewing them.

Eventually, the party winds down and he’s one of the last to leave. He and his wife Gretta are heading off to a hotel for what Gabriel thinks will be a passionately romantic night. Sadly, that’s not how it turns out. Gretta had listened to a song before they left the family, and it had reminded her of a long lost love. And she’d been thinking about him ever since. Worse, she blamed herself for him dying because he came out in the lousy weather to see her.

After Gretta falls asleep crying, Gabriel is left thinking about the fact that there was this whole aspect of Gretta’s life that he knew nothing about, and thinking about how many dead people are living in the minds of people who still think of them. He realizes how he will also just be a memory one day, if remembered at all.

Summary

I loved this book, mostly because I’ve also spent a lot of time over the years, pondering life and death, and coming to many of the same conclusions as Joyce through Gabriel.

I also enjoyed listening to the beautiful Irish accent and many (now-dated) Irish words from the time.

It was a great way to spend an hour and a half. I need to read more of Joyce’s work.

8 out of 10

2026-08-20