A review by sidharthvardhan
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

5.0

Joyce delivers again. The first pages are the best - spent as they are in Stephen's consciousness when he was a very sensitive kid. I thought Stephen would be a born rebel (the way I had imagined Joyce to be) - but he seemed to be an obedient and meek child to began with and have taken a lot of time to make up his mind on various institutions (nationalism, religion, arts etc) In fact, for the most part, he is not an artist at all - the moment of epiphany which sets him onto path of becoming a writer came much later. It is this giving up on old Irish values and adopting new ones which is the central theme of the book.