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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
inspiring
sad
fast-paced
I loved this
Parallels the lives for the author and Lucia Joyce. The fathers are at times in stark contrast to each other. Mary's father is cruel and abusive. Neither family is supportive of their daughters. It's a bleak coming of age story. Drawings are expressive and poignant.
Copy courtesy of Netgalley
Copy courtesy of Netgalley
Amazing comparison of narratives in graphic novel form, both autobiographical and biographical. Skilled piece of writing and use of visuals
Technically accomplished, artistically excellent, and at times very well told autobiography/biography from academic Mary Talbot and her comic artist husband Bryan Talbot, Dotter Of Her Father's Eyes didn't quite resonate with me as much as I had hoped it would.
It seems harsh to leap right into the book's main problem, but it's something which really struck me at the end - the book sets itself up to compare Mary Talbot's life with her tyrannical Joycean scholar father with that of James Joyce's own daughter Lucia. The problem for me was that after reading it I wasn't quite sure how the two stories were connected. Reading this for book group meant I got to hear my fellow book groupers' take on it, one of whom pointed out that the peaks and troughs in Mary's and Lucia's lives are contrasted - as things go badly for Mary they go well for Lucia, and vice versa. It's a fair comment, but on my first read through I missed it entirely which doesn't suggest a strong structure.
What I did like about it was almost everything else. Both stories, Mary's and Lucia's, were interesting and well told. Bryan Talbot's art is great, differentiating nicely between the three time periods covered, and with a great use of sparing colour. He's also a dab hand at depicting every day items in a pleasingly cartoony way - trains, Penguin bars, cameras, all get the treatment.
There's also a lovely level of detail and care in the writing. Mary's annotations to Bryan's artwork, occasionally gently scolding him for drawing scenes from her past inaccurately, are wonderfully endearing, and her knowledge of her subject shines through. I definitely learned more about the Joyces' life from here than I knew previously.
It's worth reading, even if it is a little strange with its lack of a strong central thesis.
It seems harsh to leap right into the book's main problem, but it's something which really struck me at the end - the book sets itself up to compare Mary Talbot's life with her tyrannical Joycean scholar father with that of James Joyce's own daughter Lucia. The problem for me was that after reading it I wasn't quite sure how the two stories were connected. Reading this for book group meant I got to hear my fellow book groupers' take on it, one of whom pointed out that the peaks and troughs in Mary's and Lucia's lives are contrasted - as things go badly for Mary they go well for Lucia, and vice versa. It's a fair comment, but on my first read through I missed it entirely which doesn't suggest a strong structure.
What I did like about it was almost everything else. Both stories, Mary's and Lucia's, were interesting and well told. Bryan Talbot's art is great, differentiating nicely between the three time periods covered, and with a great use of sparing colour. He's also a dab hand at depicting every day items in a pleasingly cartoony way - trains, Penguin bars, cameras, all get the treatment.
There's also a lovely level of detail and care in the writing. Mary's annotations to Bryan's artwork, occasionally gently scolding him for drawing scenes from her past inaccurately, are wonderfully endearing, and her knowledge of her subject shines through. I definitely learned more about the Joyces' life from here than I knew previously.
It's worth reading, even if it is a little strange with its lack of a strong central thesis.
Liked the visuals. Learnt about Lucia Joyce. Interesting and quick read.
After researching Lucia, I read quite a few different versions of her history, interestingly. But as a result, I don't know what to believe.
The two main characters story overlapped but I didn't feel attached to the other girl's story.
Overall was disappointed as I expected a profound story about father daughter relationship but personally it didn't really envoke that much emotion.
After researching Lucia, I read quite a few different versions of her history, interestingly. But as a result, I don't know what to believe.
The two main characters story overlapped but I didn't feel attached to the other girl's story.
Overall was disappointed as I expected a profound story about father daughter relationship but personally it didn't really envoke that much emotion.
Dotter of her Father’s Eyes is one of the more interesting comics to have been released recently, and it starts with the way the title is set out. On the book it is “Dotter of her Father’s Eyes”, a lower case “h”, where one would normally expect “Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes”. It’s a small thing, and something I only noticed when I was looking at the cover as I started to write this, but it’s a good example of how much this book rewards close and repeated readings. The lower case here is significant as the whole book is about gender, about the oppression of women during the twentieth century and their changing status.
The book deals with Mary Talbot’s upbringing and her relationship with her father, a leading Joycean scholar, in parallel with that of James Joyce’s tragic daughter Lucia. The narrative rarely takes place in the present, but in an early scene where Mary is chatting to two of here colleagues about Lucia Joyce who ask if she is finding parallels, she replies:
“I bloody hope not! She spent most of her life in mental institutions.”
As the story goes on though, we do find some parallels, but the gender has changed. Lucia is oppressed and opposed in her creativity, and dealt with coldly, by her mother, who seems bitter that Lucia is, initially at least, able to be more independent than her mother could ever have dreamed of being. It isn’t spelled out in the book, but one gets the impression that her mother’s deep lying resentment comes from having the burden of being responsible for raising a family whilst her husband indulges every artistic whim, dragging the family hither and thither with little to no security other than can be obtained by his reputation as a Modernist genius.
Lucia has a talent and a drive for dance, and it is her relentless pursuit of this, which only mirrors her father’s relentless pursuit of literary perfection, which results in her persecution and mental instability. Ultimately she is betrayed by her father, on whom she should have been able to rely as a fellow artist, in this exchange:
“Lucia, dearest, this latest obsession is doing you no good. You have to stop. Find some other creative outlet. This dancing is too much for you.”
“But it’s my life, Babbo. How can I not dance?”
“Lucia, Lucia. Be content. It’s enough if a woman can write a letter and carry an umbrella gracefully.”
Although Lucia is not committed to an asylum until her brother does it after she attacks her mother during an argument, it feels like this is where she is broken. The one person you would expect support from, who seems to pride himself on how unconventional he is, reveals his own conventional prejudices on a woman’s place in society.
As mentioned before, there do appear to be parallels between Mary and Lucia. These help show how the role of women in society has changed somewhat over the years, but more importantly also help bring home the impact of these attitudes due to Mary being brought up in a “normal” (for want of a better word) household in the north-west of England. For somebody like me, from a similar area if not era, Mary’s story brings the message home very effectively.
Mary’s story shows her father, her “cold mad feary father” to be emotionally distant and angry, with the occasional bouts of closeness. He is emotionally and physically violent towards his daughter, and loves to put her down. Two instances of this come to the fore immediately. The first is when Mary’s mother is reading out her good school report which states that Mary always tries, to which her father retorts, “Mary is always trying. How true!”. this scene goes on to show him decrying all women using a latin phrase from a poem. When he should be building up his daughter’s confidence, he seems to wish to demolish it simply so he can, in his own eyes, look clever. The other is when she completes her BA at Preston Polytechnic, whilst she has a young family to tend to, and to which he says, “B.A? Bloomin’ Awful!”. However unlike Lucia, Mary is empowered to stand up for herself, to defy this misogynist:
“No, Dad. Brilliant Achievement!”
To be honest, the emotional response in the reader at this point is to cheer her to the rafters.
There are other obvious parallels between Lucia and Mary’s experiences. Mary too desires to be a ballerina. In a class at her primary school the children are being asked what they wish to do when they grow up. A girl who answers that she would like to be a nurse gains approval, “Well that’s a nice job for a girl...". Mary makes a rather innocent but cutting answer:
“And Mary, what about you?”
“I want to be a ballerina, Sister Bernadette.”
“Well now, that’s pretty, I suppose. And if God doesn’t want you to be a ballerina, what else would you like to do?”
“Draw a pension, Sister.”
This is an allusion to a remark made by one of her working class neighbours who where looking after her whilst her mother was at work after school. Class runs through this as well, which is to be expected of a story emerging from Britain, but it is pretty much subsumed by that of gender. After all women where subject to prejudice and misogyny regardless of what class they belonged to.
One scene that does need to mentioned is the rather horrific birth scene. I was born in the same era as Mary and Bryan’s sons in 1970, and the thought that women had to experience such neglect for the physical and emotional well being during birth such a short time ago is quite appalling.
In all of this I have failed to mention Bryan Talbot’s artwork. In most cases with an artists so well known, you could say that it was in his usual style and up to his usual standard. Unfortunately that is never the case with Mr. Talbot. It is up to his usual standard in every way. In terms of pure storytelling, this is a comic which a lot of artists would do well to study. Clear and concise, it gets all the information required over to the reader so that you are never forced to read a page two or three times just to understand what is going on at the most fundamental level.
Any reader of Bryan’s though would understand that the man has no set style. He has a huge range, using what is most appropriate to the story being told, whether that is the intense science fiction action caperings of Luther Arkwright, the distressing but uplifting “Tale of One Bad Rat”, the experimental “Alice in Sunderland” or sundry others. In this he has used a ligne clair style for the most part, with deviation for some of the more emotionally dramatic sequences involving Lucia. Particularly effective is the page design for Lucia’s committal to asylum.
Overall there is so much to this book that it will take me a few more readings to fully appreciate everything that is being said. There is a lot more to it than I have mentioned here, and I look forward to Mary M Talbot’s historical graphic novel. If it is a fraction as good as this then it will still be better than 99% of everything else.
The book deals with Mary Talbot’s upbringing and her relationship with her father, a leading Joycean scholar, in parallel with that of James Joyce’s tragic daughter Lucia. The narrative rarely takes place in the present, but in an early scene where Mary is chatting to two of here colleagues about Lucia Joyce who ask if she is finding parallels, she replies:
“I bloody hope not! She spent most of her life in mental institutions.”
As the story goes on though, we do find some parallels, but the gender has changed. Lucia is oppressed and opposed in her creativity, and dealt with coldly, by her mother, who seems bitter that Lucia is, initially at least, able to be more independent than her mother could ever have dreamed of being. It isn’t spelled out in the book, but one gets the impression that her mother’s deep lying resentment comes from having the burden of being responsible for raising a family whilst her husband indulges every artistic whim, dragging the family hither and thither with little to no security other than can be obtained by his reputation as a Modernist genius.
Lucia has a talent and a drive for dance, and it is her relentless pursuit of this, which only mirrors her father’s relentless pursuit of literary perfection, which results in her persecution and mental instability. Ultimately she is betrayed by her father, on whom she should have been able to rely as a fellow artist, in this exchange:
“Lucia, dearest, this latest obsession is doing you no good. You have to stop. Find some other creative outlet. This dancing is too much for you.”
“But it’s my life, Babbo. How can I not dance?”
“Lucia, Lucia. Be content. It’s enough if a woman can write a letter and carry an umbrella gracefully.”
Although Lucia is not committed to an asylum until her brother does it after she attacks her mother during an argument, it feels like this is where she is broken. The one person you would expect support from, who seems to pride himself on how unconventional he is, reveals his own conventional prejudices on a woman’s place in society.
As mentioned before, there do appear to be parallels between Mary and Lucia. These help show how the role of women in society has changed somewhat over the years, but more importantly also help bring home the impact of these attitudes due to Mary being brought up in a “normal” (for want of a better word) household in the north-west of England. For somebody like me, from a similar area if not era, Mary’s story brings the message home very effectively.
Mary’s story shows her father, her “cold mad feary father” to be emotionally distant and angry, with the occasional bouts of closeness. He is emotionally and physically violent towards his daughter, and loves to put her down. Two instances of this come to the fore immediately. The first is when Mary’s mother is reading out her good school report which states that Mary always tries, to which her father retorts, “Mary is always trying. How true!”. this scene goes on to show him decrying all women using a latin phrase from a poem. When he should be building up his daughter’s confidence, he seems to wish to demolish it simply so he can, in his own eyes, look clever. The other is when she completes her BA at Preston Polytechnic, whilst she has a young family to tend to, and to which he says, “B.A? Bloomin’ Awful!”. However unlike Lucia, Mary is empowered to stand up for herself, to defy this misogynist:
“No, Dad. Brilliant Achievement!”
To be honest, the emotional response in the reader at this point is to cheer her to the rafters.
There are other obvious parallels between Lucia and Mary’s experiences. Mary too desires to be a ballerina. In a class at her primary school the children are being asked what they wish to do when they grow up. A girl who answers that she would like to be a nurse gains approval, “Well that’s a nice job for a girl...". Mary makes a rather innocent but cutting answer:
“And Mary, what about you?”
“I want to be a ballerina, Sister Bernadette.”
“Well now, that’s pretty, I suppose. And if God doesn’t want you to be a ballerina, what else would you like to do?”
“Draw a pension, Sister.”
This is an allusion to a remark made by one of her working class neighbours who where looking after her whilst her mother was at work after school. Class runs through this as well, which is to be expected of a story emerging from Britain, but it is pretty much subsumed by that of gender. After all women where subject to prejudice and misogyny regardless of what class they belonged to.
One scene that does need to mentioned is the rather horrific birth scene. I was born in the same era as Mary and Bryan’s sons in 1970, and the thought that women had to experience such neglect for the physical and emotional well being during birth such a short time ago is quite appalling.
In all of this I have failed to mention Bryan Talbot’s artwork. In most cases with an artists so well known, you could say that it was in his usual style and up to his usual standard. Unfortunately that is never the case with Mr. Talbot. It is up to his usual standard in every way. In terms of pure storytelling, this is a comic which a lot of artists would do well to study. Clear and concise, it gets all the information required over to the reader so that you are never forced to read a page two or three times just to understand what is going on at the most fundamental level.
Any reader of Bryan’s though would understand that the man has no set style. He has a huge range, using what is most appropriate to the story being told, whether that is the intense science fiction action caperings of Luther Arkwright, the distressing but uplifting “Tale of One Bad Rat”, the experimental “Alice in Sunderland” or sundry others. In this he has used a ligne clair style for the most part, with deviation for some of the more emotionally dramatic sequences involving Lucia. Particularly effective is the page design for Lucia’s committal to asylum.
Overall there is so much to this book that it will take me a few more readings to fully appreciate everything that is being said. There is a lot more to it than I have mentioned here, and I look forward to Mary M Talbot’s historical graphic novel. If it is a fraction as good as this then it will still be better than 99% of everything else.
This is a combination of a memoir and a biography. Mary Talbot writes about growing up the daughter of an eminent Joycean scholar, and about Joyce's daughter, Lucia. Though a generation apart, they were both bound by the the restrictions on women. Mary transcended them, helped by coming of age at a time of women's liberation. It's beautifully imagined by the wonderful Bryan Talbot. He vividly summons up '50s England and '20s and '30s Paris.
Mary has had a successful career as an academic. She turned to a graphic memoir after retiring from academia.
Mary has had a successful career as an academic. She turned to a graphic memoir after retiring from academia.
Este cómic juega con el paralelo de las vidas de la autora Mary Talbot y Lucia, la hija de James Joyce. La idea funciona bien durante una parte del libro pero termina desgastándose cuando la historia de Lucia se roba el protagonismo y luego termina abruptamente.
Destaca la forma en que se mezcla la obra de Joyce, y las descripciones de las distintas épocas culturales por las que pasan las protagonistas aunque por momento pueden ser confusas. La autora no tiene miedo de mostrar lo duro y abusivo que era su padre con ella y aunque uno espera encontrar un paralelo con Lucia y su padre, quizás el paralelo más correcto es con Lucia y su madre, Nora.
El arte está hecho a la medida de la historia que se quiere contar, cambiando de estilo entre las distintas épocas. Ayuda mucho para que el libro sea fácil de leer, especialmente en los momentos más duros.
Destaca la forma en que se mezcla la obra de Joyce, y las descripciones de las distintas épocas culturales por las que pasan las protagonistas aunque por momento pueden ser confusas. La autora no tiene miedo de mostrar lo duro y abusivo que era su padre con ella y aunque uno espera encontrar un paralelo con Lucia y su padre, quizás el paralelo más correcto es con Lucia y su madre, Nora.
El arte está hecho a la medida de la historia que se quiere contar, cambiando de estilo entre las distintas épocas. Ayuda mucho para que el libro sea fácil de leer, especialmente en los momentos más duros.
Scholars of James Joyce will find this an interesting read. Artwork which moves the reader definitively between eras moves between styles, too, and does a fine job of setting the tone. In this grimly told tale of two daughters' stormy relationships with their fathers, characterizations are real and the story paints a picture of two different historical eras from perspectives we don't expect. I've really tried to stretch myself to read in many formats. Experiencing a comic on Adobe Digital Editions is just a tad tough, but this uniquely conceived memoir was worth the effort.