A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I enjoyed what little I understood of this book. I thought it was a convincing character study with some profound moments. I did get most of the main historical references about Parnell etc, but when it got into the more obscure areas of politics and literature of late 19th century Ireland I was faaaaairly flummoxed. Between that and the complex language, my enjoyment of this was severely hampered. Also the section on religion, while probably one of the more true to life accounts of what it was like to grow up in Catholic Ireland at the time, was nevertheless one of the most impenetrable walls of text I've ever forced myself to read through. Jaysus.