Ulysses Review Summer 2025

For the past 79 days, I have been a member of a group hosted on Facebook called Ulysses in 80. I asked people in the group what is your elevator pitch to your friends and family about why you keep reading. Here are a few of the responses I liked:

• For me, the pitch is something like this: Ulysses can be frustrating at times, but I keep reading because it’s like nothing else. It’s funny, weird, satiric, beautiful, sad, revelatory, and deeply, deeply human. Joyce captures a single day in Dublin with such richness that everyday things, like walking, talking, eating, and thinking, become epic. The more I read, the more I notice: echoes, jokes, connections, emotions. Mostly, and hardest to explain, is that it starts to feel personal, like the book is alive and evolving as I read. — Mary Morris
• I’m only managing because of this Facebook page. It’s really hard. I’m not being pretentious! But I’m glad I’m doing it. I’m learning lots about reading a difficult novel and why it’s worth it. I’m trying not to over think it but get what I can on my first read. I’m enjoying the support of others. It’s a great experience! — Sharon Montgomery
• I'm Irish and so aware of how contradictory everything in Ireland seems to be - the people, the culture, the history, the language (s!), the literature, attitude to life - Ulysses somehow helps explain how/why we are the way we are. And the more you read it the easier it is to come to an acceptance… and of course the real genius of Ulysses is you could replace the words 'Irish' and 'in Ireland' in the above with 'human' and 'on earth'. — Cliona O'Farrelly

As for my opinion, here are three lines that stood out to me:

1. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods (p. 340). 
2. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland (p. 523).
3. He thought that he thought that he was a Jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew he was not (p. 558).