Yes I said yes I will Yes

I've developed a bit of an obsession with audiobooks over the last year or so and I've loved many of them but I've just finished what is quite definitely and without any doubt the best of all (for the moment): Ulysses, read by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan. James Joyce always said to people who had problems understanding the book that they should just read it aloud. That's not quite enough, to be honest. Declan Kibberd's Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living is a great help. His introduction and notes in the Penguin edition are useful as well. 

The thing is, if you're English, and you tackle Ulysses, you read it with a general Father Ted-like Irish accent. Jim Norton brings the book alive with about a hundred, entirely separate Irish accents. I thought it was the most brilliant performance of a novel I'd ever heard - until I got to Marcella Riordan's performance of Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the the climax. It's a staggering achievement. I hope they won lots of awards for it. 

Just one quotation from the book. It's very famous, but even so. When Bloom and Dedalus step out of Bloom's house, into the garden, they see: 'The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.' 

PS The headline is composed of the last seven words of the book.