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John Banville on James Joyce's Dubliners

Episode 7

The Perverse Madonna

Featuring John Banville

Audio episode · 9 min

John Banville on Dubliners

A bright Sunday morning in Joyce's Dublin, church bells going, and a landlady counting her cards before a talk she does not intend to lose. In The Boarding House, from James Joyce's Dubliners, Mrs Mooney watches a flirtation ripen under her own roof and does nothing, until doing nothing has done it all. John Banville admires her the way you admire a well-made blade, and he has a name for what her daughter Polly is becoming. He grew up among these mothers, and he can tell you what the young man on the stairs is worth. The question he leaves is the hard one: when the wedding comes, who has won?

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