The Clay Game

On Halloween night in Joyce's Dublin, a blindfolded woman reaches over a row of saucers while a family holds its breath. That game gives Clay, the tenth story of James Joyce's Dubliners, its title, and John Banville handles it with unusual tenderness. He begins with Maria of the Dublin by Lamplight laundry: her tram ride, her small talk with a gentleman who has a drop taken. Then comes the largest claim he makes in this series, about what stories in which nothing happens are made of. And he ends on the song Maria sings, and on something Joyce does with it that Banville admits he cannot explain.