At first it's elusive as hell, but once Stephen starts to develop mentally, it goes through some very well rendered (if fairly standard) buldinsroman tropes. Especially the little creative epiphanies he has along the way, which feel vital and at times, even beautiful almost a century later. There is a lot of mucking about with nascent catholic guilt, and the various kinds of guilt that arise from blindly accepting, fighting and eventually rejecting said catholic guilt. I felt like there might also have been a whole layer of classical allusions which I'm just not educated enough to get, what with the little quips in latin and all. I like Stephen Daedalus, but I didn't find myself genuinely caring about his ambitions and insecurities the way I did with the characters in Dubliners.