“Grace”. - A Short Story by James Joyce from Dubliners - 1914

Born 1882 Rathgar, Ireland

Died 1941 Zurich, Switzerland 

Dubliners 1914

A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man 1916

Ulysses 1922

Finnegen’s Wake 1939

One of my goals for Irish Short Story Month, VIII is to complete posts on those stories from Dubliners I did not previously read.  After posting yesterday on “The Boardinghouse”, there were five left.  Today’s story, “Grace”, as does yesterday’s story, shows us the impact of extreme alcoholism  on Irish family life.

The story opens with the central character passed out on the floor of a pub, he bit of part of his tongue in the fall.  Others in the pub, including a constable, get him to his feet. A friend takes him home.  We learn about his family through his wife.  She tells his friends he is not “The worse husband in the world”.  Three of his friends conspire to take him to a Catholic retreat in the hope this will help him abate his drinking.  They get into an interesting and funny debate about The Catholic Church, especially the doctrine of Papal infalibility.

You can listen to a dramatic in Irish accents reading of “Grace” on YouTube

Mel u

The Reading Life