Yes, Joyce’s novel isn’t the easy flow of reading, and yet it is because the words run as thoughts associated by links to one another. This wouldn’t be called stream of consciousness writing as it isn’t in first person pov, but it does give a sense of character, his thoughts and fears and wants. And, it is more articulately constructed than Faulkner’s Benjy.
This short excerpt is a fine example of it:
It would be lovely to sleep for one night in that cottage before the fire of smoking turf, in the dark lit by the fire, in the warm dark, breathing the smell of the peasants, air and rain and turf and corduroy. But, O, the road there between the trees was dark! You would be lost to the dark. It made him afraid to think of how it was. (p. 18)
Joyce feeds our senses of touch, sight and smell. Inadvertently, we hear…the sound of nothing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology