The Book as World is an exciting book for two reasons: it has a coherent thesis which, if not absolutely original, does make a convincing case for a new reading of Ulysses; and its close reading of the text is exceptionally intelligent and illuminating. Marilyn French's main interest is in the style, or perhaps one should say the styles, of the novel, and in the roles of the narrator. She posits the notion of a malevolent narrator who contemptuously refuses to mediate the events in the book for the reader who is thereby forced to engage in that process himself, sometimes against the apparent wishes of the scandalously unreliable narrator. He wears a variety of masks; the first, in the early chapters, fairly objective, becoming more ironic, then derisive, and finally impersonal and indifferent. The reader, of whom much is demanded, is put in the same position as Bloom or Stephen in having to contend for the virtues of charity, intellectual integrity, and basic human decency in a hostile or indifferent universe, and always in a state of uncertainty. (pp. 188-89)
It would be misleading to attempt an abstract of her general argument since this is developed through a complex, though always clear, critical examination of the text. There is no aspect of the book that her keen mind does not illuminate….
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