Eveline

John Banville reads "Eveline" as the clearest case of the anomaly he finds all through James Joyce's Dubliners: a longing to be elsewhere, paired with absolute terror of the freedom to go. Eveline has been offered a life in Buenos Aires by Frank, who barely appears in the story. Banville wonders why Frank doesn't marry her in Dublin first and take her afterwards; if he were Eveline, he'd be suspicious too.

The turn is a wren. An American friend of Banville's watched a nature program in which 20 or 30 wrens crammed into one nest box for the winter, and pronounced it Irish: everyone together in a tiny place, complaining and shoving, saying they'd love to be somewhere else. He also decodes a phrase non-Irish readers will miss, "he wasn't so bad then," meaning her father wasn't drinking so hard. He won't tell you whether she goes, and doesn't hold out much hope either way.