A collection of stories depicting middle-class Catholic life in Dublin. The frustrations of childhood, disappointments of adolescence and mystery of sexual awakening are related with clarity and sensitivity. 

          This volume continues the masterly unabridged reading of the short stories. It contains the last five stories from the collection: A Painful Case, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and perhaps the most welt-known of all the stories (and the longest), The Dead.