SOURCE: "Edna O'Brien's 'Lantern Slides' and Joyce's 'The Dead': Shadows of a Bygone Era," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 32, No. 3, Summer, 1995, pp. 437-46.

In the following essay, Pearce examines similarities between the works of O'Brien and James Joyce, in particular focusing upon O'Brien's "Lantern Slides," which Pearce characterizes as a "feminist rewriting" of Joyce's "The Dead."

In 1974, Grace Eckley noted [in her Edna O'Brien] the similarities between James Joyce and then-emerging Irish talent, Edna O'Brien. Eckley specifically cites O'Brien's "Irish Revel" as "a West of Ireland version of Joyce's classic, 'The Dead,'" comparing the blanketing snow of Joyce's meta-phoric ending to the frost that comes "like the descent of winter on Mary's heart" at the end of the O'Brien story. O'Brien's diction and rhythm clearly bestow homage on Joyce: "Frost was general all over Ireland: frost like a weird blossom on the branches, on the river-bank...