Finnegans Wake is a comedy, although trying to unravel its mysteries is no joke at all! Even the most devoted fans of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses have difficulty in coming to terms with the labyrinthine riddle of Joyce's last great novel. At root, though, the book is simple, charming and deeply moving.
Publican Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, his ever-loving wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, their daughter Isobel and twin sons Shem and Shaun represent all humanity. The novel is a dream (their dream?) and also a gloss on Irish and world history. The complexities of Joyce's multilingual puns begin to fall away in this fresh and amusing reading, making the book accessible to many would-be readers for the first time.
