I'm Asking for My Rights

A dressing-room in Joyce's Dublin, a concert falling to pieces, and a mother holding a contract for eight guineas while a committee man counts four pounds into her hand. Mrs Kearney of A Mother has been embarrassing readers of James Joyce's Dubliners for a century. John Banville winces along with everyone else, then does the more interesting thing: he asks what she was actually owed, and who was holding the country up while its men were in the pub. By the end you will know what a guinea meant, which mother in the book she would never let her daughter near, and what tomorrow morning looks like for Mrs Kearney.