Dotter of her Father’s Eyes by Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot

Bought it in Sipur Pashut bookstore in Tel-Aviv – a short one, less than one hundred pages, an-hour-and-half kinda read. At the beach, where else.

A strange story. It’s part memoir, part fictiotionalized drawn narrative about Lucia Joyce, James Joyce’s daughter, from her birth through career in dancing, at the backdrop of her tough relations with her mother Nora, and ending with Lucia being confined to a mental institution.

The story is told in juxtaposition with the memoir of Mary Talbot herself, a daughter of a renown British Joycean scholar, and her difficult relationship with her own father.

What gives this book special flavor of sorts is the fact that the drawings are made by Bryan Talbot, the cartoonist who is also Mrs. Talbot’s husband. A family enterprise, so to say.

Overall conclusion is that the pictures were great, but for me, it didn’t went anywhere past my beach read. Maybe it will, for devoted Joyce fans, but not for me. But I also suspect, it might just as well sparkle their anger. Who knows, huh.