“Abbs has found a gripping and little-known story at the heart of one of the 20th century’s most astonishing creative moments, researched it deeply, and brought the extraordinary Joyce family and their circle in 1920s Paris to richly-imagined life.”—Emma Darwin, bestselling author of A Secret Alchemy and The Mathematics of Love
For readers who adored novels like The Paris Wife, Z, and Loving … who adored novels like The Paris Wife, Z, and Loving Frank, comes Annabel Abbs highly praised debut novel, where she spins the story of James Joyce’s fascinating, and tragic, daughter, Lucia.
“When she reaches her full capacity for rhythmic dancing, James Joyce may yet be known as his daughter’s father . . .”
The review in the Paris Times in November 1928 is rapturous in its praise of Lucia Joyce’s skill and artistry as a dancer. The family has made their home in Paris—where the latest ideas in art, music, and literature converge. Acolytes regularly visit the Joyce apartment to pay homage to Ireland’s exiled literary genius. Among them is a tall, thin young man named Samuel Beckett—a fellow Irish expat who idolizes Joyce and with whom Lucia becomes romantically involved.
Lucia is both gifted and motivated, training tirelessly with some of the finest teachers in the world. Though her father delights in his daughter’s talent, she clashes with her mother, Nora. And as her relationship with Beckett sours, Lucia’s dreams unravel, as does her hope of a life beyond her father’s shadow.
With Lucia’s behavior growing increasingly erratic, James Joyce sends her to pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Here, at last, she will tell her own story—a fascinating, heartbreaking account of thwarted ambition, passionate creativity, and the power of love to both inspire and destroy.
The Joyce Girl creates a compelling and moving account of the real-life Joyce Girl, of unrealized dreams and rejection, and of the destructive love of a father.
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For a number of reasons, I was eager to read this novel based on the sad life of Lucia Joyce, daughter of the famed Irish writer James Joyce. Several years ago I had seen the play Calico in London, starring Romola Garai as Lucia. Like the novel, it focused on the Paris years, when Lucia was pursuing a career in dance and falling in love with Samuel Beckett. I had taken a seminar in Beckett’s fiction in my senior year at university, so that aspect was of interest, too. While The Joyce Girl didn’t have the same impact as the play, it was a fairly good read, although I found myself getting a bit bored with it halfway through.
Lucia led a life that was in some ways exciting, in other ways quite sad. She was dominated by her parents, a father who wanted her to stay at home and be his muse and a mother who made no secret of the fact that her son was her favorite and lost no opportunity to criticize Lucia. A steady stream of artists spilled through their Paris flat, so it was no wonder that Lucia longed to become an artist. She chose modern dance as her medium, but Joyce kept pushing her to learn bookbinding. As for her mother Nora, she thought performing was indecent and just hoped that her daughter would find a nice man to marry. Despite their discouragement, Lucia was a great success at a famous dance competition, performing as a mermaid in a costume of her own design–so much so that when another girl was given the prize, the audience exploded in outrage, chanting her name. The critics went wild, and she was even invited to train with a famous ballerina who was her idol. But due to familial demands and constant moving, Lucia never performed in public again.
Much of Abbs’s novel focuses on Lucia’s obsession with Samuel Beckett, a young Irishman (later best known for his plays, including Waiting for Godot), who assisted James in his research (his sight having begun to fail). By this time, she was becoming increasingly unstable, and it is difficult to tell whether Beckett ever had feelings for her or if he was just the person she fixed upon as a means of escape, hoping for marriage. Abbs makes him out to be even more of a cad, finally admitting to Lucia that he was only interested in learning from her father and that he had encouraged her affections in hopes that he would remain a welcome visitor. Although she has later affairs with the artist Alexander Calder and with a Russian employed by her father, she never stopped loving Beckett. Abbs considers his abrupt departure as the final push into insanity.
Lucia at one point became a patient of Karl Jung, and Abbs alternates chapters between Lucia’s memories and her sessions with Jung, who seems convinced that he can cure her, if only her father would go back to Paris and leave her entirely in his care. Joyce longs for his daughter to come home and be his muse again, but she spent the rest of her life in institutions, diagnosed as schizophrenic.
Despite the intriguing material, I found myself at first frustrate with the Joyces and then rather bored with their quarrrels, selfishness, and delusions of grandeur., and the overly romance-y bits didn’t help. Nor did the author’s excessive speculation.
The story is mainly following the life of James Joyce’s daughter but also a lot of information about the author, his wife and son. It is an understatement to say that the family is dysfunctional.
An intimate look into the life of daughter of James Joyce, who kept being kept from expressing her own genius by overbearing parents. Fascinating look into the Parisian
artists, scene in the 30’s.
Well-written and aligns with available history.
Lucia Joyce was an avant-garde modern dancer in Paris in 1928. Her father, James Joyce, was a controversial author. Abbs tells her story in the first person so we hear Lucia’s frustration at being James Joyce’s daughter and muse rather than her own person while her successes were ignored. When she wants to leave her family to be her own woman, her father guilts her into going with him and her mother setting aside her own wants and desires. She begins acting out and six years later finds herself in therapy with Carl Jung, and she’s ready to talk about her life as James Joyce’s daughter.
Abbs’ debut novel is well written and well imagined. To be sure, Abbs had to be very creative about Lucia’s life, including who she knew, what she said to whom, but the result feels real.
If you like historical novels, you need to add this book to your to-be-read list.
My thanks to Morrow and Edelweiss for an eARC.
The Joyce Girl by Annabel Abbs is a fabulous, historical fiction that focusses on the real-life daughter of author James Joyce, Lucia Joyce.
Even though I know of James Joyce, but I will be honest in that I did not know anything about his daughter. It is stunning to know how little we know about her now despite the fact that she lived from 1907-1982. All of the person letters, communications, writings, medical records concerning Lucia have been destroyed. Since reading the novel, I have researched what I could on Ms. Joyce. Between the book and the further information, knowing that she was an up and coming modern dancer with such talent in France 1920s to all of a sudden being treated and committed into sanitariums, adds even more mystery to this dramatic shift and adds to a feeling of loss that I experienced as I read this tragedy unfold.
This is definitely not light material, and it was hard to read about the life of a woman with such promise shift towards confusion, mental illness (?), and disappearance. My heart went out to her and her searches for acceptance, solace, approval, love, and happiness….yet finding it all elusive and empty.
The author clearly has spent a massive amount of time on researching her subjects, and it clearly shows through her beautiful prose and plot. The author, I feel, stayed true to the time, location, and the characters that were known and unknown throughout the book. I literally felt that I was there in Europe during the decade of change and excess and the literary descriptions provided such beautiful, vivid images. Beyond impressive.
After finishing this novel, I am still haunted by what Lucia must have experienced and what she lost. I wish things could have been different for her.
5/5 stars beyond amazing.