Reviewing the full trilogy: this is a brutal journey that I don‘t necessarily recommend taking on all at once (ie what I did). Farrell is going for realism and that means lots of misogyny and racism going around this Irish Catholic community between about 1915 and 1932. You really have to trust that he doesn‘t share his characters‘ opinions. The value here is in showing that things have been bad and divided before. You probably won‘t like Studs.