Clay

John Banville calls "Clay" one of the tenderest stories in James Joyce's Dubliners, and the tenderness is his subject. Maria, a cook in a laundry and a spinster for life, sets out on Halloween to visit the family whose boys she once minded; she buys a cake for two and sixpence, a lot of money, and loses it on the tram after a tipsy gentleman flusters her by talking to her. Banville savors her line that the gentleman was easy to get on with "even when he had a sup taken."

There's a party game, which gives the story its title and which Banville won't spoil, and Maria sings "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls," relatively happy. Behind that happiness he shows you how narrow her life is, and behind Dublin's pubs and parties an enduring melancholy, very sweet at its sweetest and extremely sad at its saddest. Maria has fortitude and is admirable within her limits. The title, he warns, says it may not last.