This is an absolutely brilliant novel, delving deep into a single day in the lives of a handful of characters. Joyce's mastery of language displayed in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is developed even further, as is his use of stream-of-consciousness, deeply authentic sense of place (and time!), and the unique perspective of his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus. Taking cues from Homer's Odyssey, Ulysses is structured around the journey of its main protagonist, Leopold Bloom, back home after a day of mourning, camaraderie, debauchery, and so on. With chapters written in wildly inventive ways, Ulysses is a joy to read, even if often posing difficulties with understanding. But this is appropriate, as how fully can we ever hope to understand the thoughts of another person, or for that matter, even our own?