Nuala O'Connor

When Nora Barnacle, a twenty-year-old maid from Galway, meets young James Joyce on a summer’s day in Dublin, she is instantly attracted to him. But she cannot yet imagine the extraordinary life they will share together. All Nora knows is she likes her Jim enough to leave behind family and home, in search of a bigger, more exciting life.

The story starts over one hundred years ago but O'Connor writes in such a way that I feel like I am reading my contemporaries. We follow Nora as they move from Ireland to Europe, struggle through years of poverty and war, and eventually achieve a sense of stability. One part I wasn't expecting was the story of their daughter Lucia (who I knew little about).

I will freely admit that I've read very little of Joyce. I have completed two chapters of Ulysses which is an achievement considering the work but the two most striking things I came away with after reading this amazing work of bio-fiction was James Joyce was some eejit, and he and Nora loved each other passionately.

Joyce may be considered a genius, but I feel he would never have achieved this without Nora by his side. He was an alcoholic and would often stay out all night drinking and doing whatever he wanted with little consideration to the money that may have been better put to use elsewhere. At one point he commissioned a painting of Nora when they barely had money to feed and house themselves. In return, she gave him love, stability and a clip around the ear when he needed it.

Nora is the archetype of the suffering wife to the creative genius, but she loved him beyond all measure. Some parts I found her naive and wanted her to leave him if only to teach him a lesson but of course she would never do that. She defended him to everyone while at the same time challenging him to do better,

This is a heavily researched work of bio-fiction but O'Connor has also taken some fictional license - as you would expect. I listened on audiobook and the narrator did a brilliant job of bringing the words to life particularly Nora's voice.

A definite recommendation on this one no matter what you think about Joyce.… (meer)

This is just a quick review because I am a bit preoccupied with rescuing some data from a trial software program before I lose access to it. (Because #LongBoringStory I am not going to pay for it all over again!)

Nora is, as the subtitle says, a love story of Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, known to booklovers as the author of Ulysses and rel="nofollow" target="_top">Finnegans Wake, even if they haven't read them. Nora was selected for the One Dublin, One Book program and I won a copy of it in a giveaway for Reading Ireland Month from Cathy at 746 Books.

#Digression: Intrigued, I looked up the previous books chosen for the One Dublin, One Book program. It turns out that I've read or have on the TBR some of the titles chosen over the years, and a couple are reviewed on this blog:

• 2006: At Swim Two Birds (1939) by Flann O'Brien


• 2007: A Long Long Way (2005) by Sebastian Barry, on the TBR


• 2008: Gulliver's Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, read ages ago


• 2010: The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890) by Oscar Wilde, read ages ago


• 2012: Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce


• 2019: The Country Girls Trilogy (1960) by Edna O'Brien, on my wishlist

Sales must be wonderful for the contemporary authors whose books are chosen. This year's choice BTW is an historical novel called The Coroner's Daughter by Andrew Hughes.

Ok, back to Nora...

The novel is written entirely from Nora's point of view, in first person. Blurbers suggest that the portrayal is reasonably faithful to real life, and the story traces the couple's meeting in Ireland in 1904, and their peripatetic, often poverty-stricken lifestyle in Europe and the UK. It shows Joyce's determination to live by the pen, and the extraordinary impact that publication had on their precarious finances. It also shows Nora's loyalty in the face of (a-hem) unreasonable behaviour by Joyce, and it makes the case that she was his muse and that, without her, his masterpieces would not have been written. Although she was an uneducated, unsophisticated woman who (under sufferance) read only bits and pieces of his work — and she never contemplated helping him with the writing even when his eyes were intolerably bad — she was intelligent and made good company when they were gadding about socially.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/01/10/nora-a-love-story-of-nora-barnacle-and-james...… (meer)