That Blooming book (Part 2)

Andrew Miller

I read Ulysses at university. With a book of that scale, you go through periods of being totally engaged and then some of it is like having teeth pulled - totally boring. Ulysses has a very secure position now. Nobody will ever challenge it.

Since university I've reread the bits that I liked; dipped into it. The last bit I reread was Molly Bloom's soliloquy. It's the sort of thing you feel you've done once and that's it. I mightn't have done so well with the book if I hadn't been at college and had to read it. Still, I did better than Hemingway. When he died, they found his copy of Ulysses only had the first 50 pages cut!

Andrew Miller's Casanova is published by Septre

Anne Enright

I wasn't allowed to read Ulysses when I was young, so I bought a clandestine copy of it with holiday money and read it in the youth hostels of Cork and Kerry. I was 14 and convinced that, if only I could understand it, I was reading the dirtiest book in the world.

What did it mean to me? At the time, I think it meant that I was clever. Ulysses is like the door jamb where you mark your height as a child. I read it every seven years or so, just to see how much, as reader or writer, I have changed.

As to whether I think it is over-rated or justly-rated, I think we should all just shut up and enjoy it.

Anne Enright's The Wig My Father Wore is published by Minerva

John Banville

Apart from its artistic merits, or, indeed, its value as entertainment - it remains a wonderfully funny book - Ulysses, along with The Waste Land, The Rite of Spring, and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, marks a pivotal moment in Modernism.

Joyce set out to write a realist novel in the tradition of Flaubert and, despite his scant regard for him, Henry James, but veered off into a new book, as is the case with the other works mentioned above, is not quite the revolution it seemed at the time.

I suspect that many readers value most the more straightforward scenes, such as the marvellous passage when Bloom brings Molly her breakfast in bed, and the ruminations of Paddy Dignam's son, and Stephen Dedalus's classroom history lesses. No other Modernist had Joyce's humaneness, humour and love of the ordinary stuff of life. Ulysses is an enduring work of art.

John Banville's The Untouchables, is published by Picador

Mark O'Rowe

I haven't read Ulysses. There was a phase when I was about 19 or 20 when all my friends were reading it, but I never got around to it. I think my thing was, life's too short. I'd rather read something more entertaining. I've never even opened the book.

What do I think it's about? I've heard that, in terms of language, it blew the English language right out of the water. But that was a long time ago. And it's about a day in the life of some guy who goes around Dublin city. I have on occasion been curious to read it, but I know it's a difficult read from people who've read it. At the end of the day, I'd prefer to read something more accessible.

From the people I know who've read it, they've told me it's impossible to get into it. Ulysses seems to fail on that level - it doesn't draw you in. I think what's kept it relevant and alive is that people are constantly interpreting it.

Mark O'Rowe's Howie the Rookie was the opening production at Tallaght's Civic Theatre