Italo Svevo Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Joyce's seminal novel "Ulysses". "Confessions of Zeno" never looks outside the narrow confines of Trieste, much like Joyce's work, which rarely left Dublin in the last years of Ireland's time as part of the United Kingdom. Svevo brings a keenly sardonic wit to his observations of Trieste and, in particular, to his hero, an indifferent man who cheats on his wife, lies to his psychoanalyst and is trying to explain himself to his psychoanalyst by revisiting his memories. There is a final connection between Svevo and the character Cosini. Cosini sought psychoanalysis, he said, in
The High Road (novel) Chicago Tribune reviewer Maura Boland thought the novel failed at developing plot and character, writing " lyrical prose and striking metaphors are not enough. The book sags under the weight of literary and religious allusions, and its episodic structure at times almost obscures the narrative." The High Road (novel) The High Road is a 1988 novel by Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. The novel follows an unnamed Irish protagonist as she recovers on a Mediterranean island. It was O'Brien's tenth novel, published 11 years after "Johnny I Hardly Knew You." "Kirkus Reviews" was mildly critical of the novel's style, concluding that