No Blame Attached to Anyone

A bank cashier walks home to a village outside Joyce's Dublin, eats the same dinner in the same place, and keeps one book on his shelf disguised as a notebook. In A Painful Case, the eleventh story of James Joyce's Dubliners, a woman takes this man's hand once, and everything he has built against the world is in question. John Banville follows it all: a friendship of minds, the gesture that ends it, the years of silence after. And then a newspaper report, printed almost in full, with one flat official sentence at the end that rewrites every page before it. What Mr Duffy does with that sentence is the episode.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you love is struggling, or thinking about suicide, you don't have to carry it alone. In the United States, you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, or chat online at 988lifeline.org. Outside the United States, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential support lines by country.