A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)

I expected more from this book than what I received. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of James Joyce's most talked about works and yet I found myself disappointed when I closed its rear cover. It's not that I dislike the characters or dislike the plot; both were satisfactory. I enjoyed the character of Stephen and frequently found myself sympathizing with the awkward situations he encountered. If the whole book had revolved around Stephen as a young boy at the school he attended, I think I would have been quite pleased. Unfortunately, I was bored. I found myself fighting the urge to skim after I passed the halfway mark. 

I don't dislike Joyce's writing in general. I read Dubliners last year and sampled parts of Ulysses in my British Literature class (seeing that Joyce was Irish, I'm not entirely comfortable with him being labelled a British writer) and I liked those works. 

Perhaps my main issue with the book was the rapidly changing settings and age of the protagonist--the narrative order. Joyce jumps backwards and forwards in time often and without warning. One moment the reader sees the protagonist as a schoolboy, the next he is remembering a moment of earlier childhood and then before the reader knows it he is much older and nearly a full-grown man. I suppose this style of narrative is an acquired taste.