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

4.0

The most beautiful coming of age story I have ever read. Joyce painfully and honestly describes life growing up as an Irish Catholic; it is harrowing, beautiful and at times heartbreaking to read, and he describes it all using his signature mix of wit and elegance. The message at the core of the book is that to grow you have to give up what you are, a message well heard but often little understood; to read this book is not to just understand that message but to experience it. A few of my favourites quoted are below.

On love

His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt that he had suddenly become strong and fearless and sure of himself. But his lips would not bend to kiss her.


His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.

On independence

The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

And one quote that describes me very well

Have read little and understood less.