Madan Suvedi

A collection of 15 short stories, all about life and living, entangled in chaos, confusions, relations, culture, career and so many other aspects. The bad thing: it's a bleak read, nothing in particular will motivate you to turn pages. At times, you frawn on your pick. And the good thing is, the more you read, the more complex issues arise progressively. One story which I fully understood is Grace. It's about the religious dilemma of the Dubliners divided into Catholics and Protestants. The ending of which made me widened my eyes with ecstacy. But believe me, the level of your frustration along the pages is exactly how our life is all about: the more you understand, the more complex it becomes with so much of sorrows and very little of happiness. Or, say, so much of nothingness in our routine life and too little of meaningfulness. May be other readers would better summarize the book more critically. My conclusion is: it definitely needs a second read with more highlights and references to understand why Dubliners is acclaimed one of the best literary creations of 20th century. Some of the the beautiful quotations which work as sparks of light in the pitch dark are: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity." "There's no friends like the old friends." “Love between man and woman is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse, and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.” “I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.”