“Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are both easy to read.”
Dubliners was okay, but Portrait was too...J.D. Salingerish.
“Portrait” is a coming of age story. Or rather a “coming of aesthetic sensibility” story. Look at this prose...
“Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”