Hellish motorway experience

Listening to Jim Norton reading The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man on this outstanding recording is a first-class way of either revisiting James Joyce’s autobiographical novel or of dipping your toe in the water for the first time. I am a toe-dipper and whilst there were moments when Joyce’s ‘stream of consciousness’ technique threatened to drag me out to sea, I found that a few jabs at the ‘Play Again’ button kept me both buoyant and enlightened with regard to the author’s alter ego, Stephen Dedalus.

A memorable early scene sees young Dedalus home from boarding-school for Christmas. He is allowed to join the grown-ups for the first time for Christmas dinner, which provides a launching pad for some vocal acrobatics from our reader. There’s plenty of turkey and stuffing, but the conversation is anything but seasonal when the recent death of Charles Stewart Parnell is discussed.