Scan barcode
eantczak's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
shadowsmoon's review against another edition
3.0
Hmmm, I have changed change my rating of this book from 2 to 3 stars even though I really didn't enjoy it. I think part of the major problem with this book (even though I'm sure from a literary perspective it 'breaks boundaries' is that it is so very disjointed. I read another reviewer's post that said it was annoying that you had to have background knowledge of Lucia in order to read it. Well, yes I thoroughly agree.
It was also so far from what I was expecting. I had hoped and looked forward to a book in which I could hear Lucia's experience... a speculation of how she might have felt, what might have happened to her. But this was sadly lacking. I can understand how the effect of not having her voice very much would have emphasised some literary and historical point but it was all a bit too sparse, empty.
I also thought that the changing of narratives and POVs could have worked but... I couldn't hear different voices which made it really hard to follow - just the same judgmental voice...maybe that was the point? I am also sure that there was some clever thinking behind the abhorrent chapters in which views about how men can treat women were expounded, but I found them highly uncomfortable (disgusting even) and any sarcasm or irony was lost in the darkness of it all for me.
I really wanted to love this book and there were some absolutely gem chapters but they were far too few and far between I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear Alex talk about the book to discover what he was trying to do with it. Might go and seek that out now!
It was also so far from what I was expecting. I had hoped and looked forward to a book in which I could hear Lucia's experience... a speculation of how she might have felt, what might have happened to her. But this was sadly lacking. I can understand how the effect of not having her voice very much would have emphasised some literary and historical point but it was all a bit too sparse, empty.
I also thought that the changing of narratives and POVs could have worked but... I couldn't hear different voices which made it really hard to follow - just the same judgmental voice...maybe that was the point? I am also sure that there was some clever thinking behind the abhorrent chapters in which views about how men can treat women were expounded, but I found them highly uncomfortable (disgusting even) and any sarcasm or irony was lost in the darkness of it all for me.
I really wanted to love this book and there were some absolutely gem chapters but they were far too few and far between I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear Alex talk about the book to discover what he was trying to do with it. Might go and seek that out now!
estellaleila's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
A slow burn with delectable prose and unbelievable imagery.
felicity's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
arirang's review
5.0
Joint winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize
The judges' citation:
The dancer Lucia Joyce, daughter of the famous writer James Joyce, performed for the famous director Jean Renoir at Les Ateliers du Vieux Colombier, Paris, France in the summer of 1927, and her performance was filmed. She had been commissioned to perform for a role in Renoir's La Petite Marchande d'allumettes, based on Hans Christian Andersen's La Petite Fille aux allumettes, but her dance was cut from the final edit. She was removed.
This is apt.
Truth and beauty, perhaps they are inseparable, and so lies and ugliness."
Lucia is another excellent novel from the wonderful Galley Beggar Press, publishers (astonishingly for such a small operation) of, among other books, We That Are Young, Forbidden Line, A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, Feeding Time, Tinderbox, and, also by Alex Pheby, Playthings.
There are already excellent reviews on Goodreads from Gumble's Yard, Hugh, Jackie Law and Neil which I would strongly commend for their insights and there is a brilliant review by David Collard in the TLS review where he describes Lucia as "an ambitious and daring investigation of consciousness, agency, selfhood, mental disorder, medical callousness and misogyny," which sums it up perfectly.
So rather than cover the same ground I will focus on what I saw as the development of Lucia from Pheby's previous novel Playthings (my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2050212550).
Playthings was based on the real-life case of Daniel Paul Schreber (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Paul_Schreber). Schreber was diagnosed with what was to be later known paranoid schizophrenia and described one of his periods of mental illness in a memoir Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken.
The memoir became famous mainly because Freud drew on it heavily in his work giving Schreber's condition a, well, very Freudian interpretation. But for Schreber, a distinguished jurist, the book was actually intended to answer the moral and legal question: "In what circumstance can a person deemed insane be detained in an asylum against his declared will?"
Playthings although written in the 3rd person, is told from the perspective of Schreber and draws on his work and on the considerable volume of analysis of his case and Freud's interpretation. Indeed the one drawback of an impressive novel was that I felt it perhaps required, for a full appreciation, much more prior knowledge of the case than I had (which was precisely zero).
Lucia by contrast feels a much more accessible novel, at least to this reader. And Lucia herself is the absent centre of the novel, which is largely written from the perspective of those who encountered her during her life
And far from having a wealth of documentary evidence to draw upon, very little is known about Lucia. A surviving 1936 letter from James Joyce one of the few mentions that remains in his correspondence:
"Her case is cyclothymia, dating from the age of seven and a half. She is about thirty-three, speaks French fluently ... Her character is gay, sweet and ironic, but has had bursts of anger over nothing when she has been confined to a straitjacket."
This requires, but also enables, Pheby as a novelist to fill the gaps. As he explains after one particular anecdote where the novel has Lucia's brother Giorgio torture her pet rabbit to ensure her silence as to his incesteous relations with her:
"If there are those of you reading this who know Giorgio, you might say this never happened. But how do you know? How does one ever know what it is that occurs outside the range of one's experience? You may not know that it did happen, but this is not the same as knowing that it did not happen. Perhaps if there were documentary evidence; but who keeps such records? Is it even possible to keep evidence of things that might happen that someone wishes to keep secret? If one has secrets, and then burns the evidence on a pure, one invites speculation, and speculation is infinite in a way that the truth is not. Speculation is limited only by the sick imaginations of those who speculate, where truth is not. Why shouldn't Giorgio have tortured Lucia's rabbit to prevent her from speaking? All things that are possible are, in the absence of facts that have been destroyed that might have proved them incorrect, equally correct.
The moral of this story is: do not destroy documentary evidence of the truth, since it will come back and bit you in the arse.
This last a reference to the Joyce estate and their destruction of much of the relevant material including Lucia's own letters. In 2003 Carole Schloss wrote a biography "Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake”, stating that "this is a story that was not supposed to be told,” and found herself in a legal battle with the Joyce estate, which initially forced her publishers to redact significant parts of the book (in turn leading to early reviewer's arguing some of her claims were unsubstantiated) but which she eventually won: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/september28/shloss-joyce-settlement-092809.html
This article https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-disappearing-act-of-lucia-joyce-1796061771/amp provides both a good summary of Lucia's life, but also suggests the need for an appropriate fictional treatment. Pheby's wonderful new novel rises to the challenge he sets himself:
"This woman had gone into the afterlife friendless and I resolved to address that lack."
The judges' citation:
In his review for the Guardian, Ian Sansom wrote “Pheby is a writer possessed of unusual – indeed, extraordinary – powers”. Lucia Joyce, the daughter of James, is not a new subject for fiction. What is new here, and startlingly so, is how Pheby decides to tells her story. Psychological cruelty has rarely been rendered by such a cool hand. In this novel nothing is real; everything is real. Biographical fiction at its most honest."There are times when beauty trumps truth, but these are very few, for truth is beauty and even in the fantastic there are forms of truth - fabular truths, allegorical truths, wider human truths - that are beautiful in an universal manner. In this, a dancing puppet can exceed any philosophy in approaching both universal truth and perfect beauty - who could say otherwise after a visit to the Louvre, or the Musee d'Orsay, or the ballet, or the countryside, or the, or the, or, all the others.
The dancer Lucia Joyce, daughter of the famous writer James Joyce, performed for the famous director Jean Renoir at Les Ateliers du Vieux Colombier, Paris, France in the summer of 1927, and her performance was filmed. She had been commissioned to perform for a role in Renoir's La Petite Marchande d'allumettes, based on Hans Christian Andersen's La Petite Fille aux allumettes, but her dance was cut from the final edit. She was removed.
This is apt.
Truth and beauty, perhaps they are inseparable, and so lies and ugliness."
Lucia is another excellent novel from the wonderful Galley Beggar Press, publishers (astonishingly for such a small operation) of, among other books, We That Are Young, Forbidden Line, A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, Feeding Time, Tinderbox, and, also by Alex Pheby, Playthings.
There are already excellent reviews on Goodreads from Gumble's Yard, Hugh, Jackie Law and Neil which I would strongly commend for their insights and there is a brilliant review by David Collard in the TLS review where he describes Lucia as "an ambitious and daring investigation of consciousness, agency, selfhood, mental disorder, medical callousness and misogyny," which sums it up perfectly.
So rather than cover the same ground I will focus on what I saw as the development of Lucia from Pheby's previous novel Playthings (my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2050212550).
Playthings was based on the real-life case of Daniel Paul Schreber (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Paul_Schreber). Schreber was diagnosed with what was to be later known paranoid schizophrenia and described one of his periods of mental illness in a memoir Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken.
The memoir became famous mainly because Freud drew on it heavily in his work giving Schreber's condition a, well, very Freudian interpretation. But for Schreber, a distinguished jurist, the book was actually intended to answer the moral and legal question: "In what circumstance can a person deemed insane be detained in an asylum against his declared will?"
Playthings although written in the 3rd person, is told from the perspective of Schreber and draws on his work and on the considerable volume of analysis of his case and Freud's interpretation. Indeed the one drawback of an impressive novel was that I felt it perhaps required, for a full appreciation, much more prior knowledge of the case than I had (which was precisely zero).
Lucia by contrast feels a much more accessible novel, at least to this reader. And Lucia herself is the absent centre of the novel, which is largely written from the perspective of those who encountered her during her life
And far from having a wealth of documentary evidence to draw upon, very little is known about Lucia. A surviving 1936 letter from James Joyce one of the few mentions that remains in his correspondence:
"Her case is cyclothymia, dating from the age of seven and a half. She is about thirty-three, speaks French fluently ... Her character is gay, sweet and ironic, but has had bursts of anger over nothing when she has been confined to a straitjacket."
This requires, but also enables, Pheby as a novelist to fill the gaps. As he explains after one particular anecdote where the novel has Lucia's brother Giorgio torture her pet rabbit to ensure her silence as to his incesteous relations with her:
"If there are those of you reading this who know Giorgio, you might say this never happened. But how do you know? How does one ever know what it is that occurs outside the range of one's experience? You may not know that it did happen, but this is not the same as knowing that it did not happen. Perhaps if there were documentary evidence; but who keeps such records? Is it even possible to keep evidence of things that might happen that someone wishes to keep secret? If one has secrets, and then burns the evidence on a pure, one invites speculation, and speculation is infinite in a way that the truth is not. Speculation is limited only by the sick imaginations of those who speculate, where truth is not. Why shouldn't Giorgio have tortured Lucia's rabbit to prevent her from speaking? All things that are possible are, in the absence of facts that have been destroyed that might have proved them incorrect, equally correct.
The moral of this story is: do not destroy documentary evidence of the truth, since it will come back and bit you in the arse.
This last a reference to the Joyce estate and their destruction of much of the relevant material including Lucia's own letters. In 2003 Carole Schloss wrote a biography "Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake”, stating that "this is a story that was not supposed to be told,” and found herself in a legal battle with the Joyce estate, which initially forced her publishers to redact significant parts of the book (in turn leading to early reviewer's arguing some of her claims were unsubstantiated) but which she eventually won: https://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/september28/shloss-joyce-settlement-092809.html
This article https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-disappearing-act-of-lucia-joyce-1796061771/amp provides both a good summary of Lucia's life, but also suggests the need for an appropriate fictional treatment. Pheby's wonderful new novel rises to the challenge he sets himself:
"This woman had gone into the afterlife friendless and I resolved to address that lack."
jackielaw's review
5.0
The AI sheet that accompanied my proof copy of Lucia informed me that
“Lucia is intellectually uncompromising. Lucia is emotionally devastating. Lucia is unlike anything anyone else has ever written.”
I concur. This, his second work of creative fiction based on the life of a real person, establishes Alex Pheby as a literary talent deserving close attention.
The eponymous Lucia was the second child of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. The bare bones of her story are easily verifiable but little else is known. She was born in Trieste, Italy and lived across Europe, her peripatetic parents moving the family from hotels to shabby apartments depending on their financial status. Lucia was a talented dancer. She was Samuel Beckett’s lover. She spent the last thirty years of her life in an asylum. Following her death her remaining family strove to erase her from the public record. They destroyed her letters, removed references to her from the archives. Even her medical records were taken.
In this novel the author does not attempt to create a detailed biography. Rather he presents Lucia’s story in fragments and told from a variety of points of view. Between each chapter is a motif detailing the discovery of an ancient Egyptian tomb that is developed to serve as explanation.
The story created is shocking and affecting, presented in a manner that makes it all too believable. The voice throughout remains detached, the needs of the narrators evident even when they presume they are acting in Lucia’s best interests. The reader will feel outraged at her treatment.
The tale starts at Lucia’s end, in 1982, when undertakers arrive to collect the body of the deceased. Six years later a student is employed to burn the contents of a chest filled with letters, photographs and other effects. The thoughts of these characters offer a first glimpse of Lucia. Mostly though they focus on their subject as they go about the tasks assigned. Lucia is subsidiary, often something of a nuisance. This sets the tone for how she was treated in life.
Lucia is depicted as an object that others must deal with. If she will not comply she must be tamed. Children are expected to behave, denied agency ‘for their own good’ with resulting complaints dismissed. Troublesome little girls can be threatened to silence them.
Lucia’s relationships with various family members, especially her brother, are vividly dealt with. Whatever other’s behaviour, it is she who will stand accused of spoiling things for everyone if she protests.
As a young woman Lucia was considered beautiful. She clashed with her mother which led to her being incarcerated. The cutting edge treatments for mental illnesses at the time were experimental and horrifying.
Lucia was moved around as a cure for her behaviour was sought. After the war she was transferred to an asylum in Northampton where she spent her remaining decades. She was buried here, away from her family. Even in death they sought to silence her.
The fragmentary style of writing and the distractions of the narrators are effectively harnessed to portray the instability that was a signature in Lucia’s life. The reader is offered glimpses but always at the periphery. There is a sense of detachment, a tacit acceptance that those who will not behave as society requires are a nuisance to be subdued and hidden away.
Yet this is a story that pulses with emotion. Lucia rises inexorably from the page. The author has filled out the gaps in her history with a story that whilst unsettling resonates. That he does so with such flair and aplomb makes this a recommended read.
“Lucia is intellectually uncompromising. Lucia is emotionally devastating. Lucia is unlike anything anyone else has ever written.”
I concur. This, his second work of creative fiction based on the life of a real person, establishes Alex Pheby as a literary talent deserving close attention.
The eponymous Lucia was the second child of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. The bare bones of her story are easily verifiable but little else is known. She was born in Trieste, Italy and lived across Europe, her peripatetic parents moving the family from hotels to shabby apartments depending on their financial status. Lucia was a talented dancer. She was Samuel Beckett’s lover. She spent the last thirty years of her life in an asylum. Following her death her remaining family strove to erase her from the public record. They destroyed her letters, removed references to her from the archives. Even her medical records were taken.
In this novel the author does not attempt to create a detailed biography. Rather he presents Lucia’s story in fragments and told from a variety of points of view. Between each chapter is a motif detailing the discovery of an ancient Egyptian tomb that is developed to serve as explanation.
The story created is shocking and affecting, presented in a manner that makes it all too believable. The voice throughout remains detached, the needs of the narrators evident even when they presume they are acting in Lucia’s best interests. The reader will feel outraged at her treatment.
The tale starts at Lucia’s end, in 1982, when undertakers arrive to collect the body of the deceased. Six years later a student is employed to burn the contents of a chest filled with letters, photographs and other effects. The thoughts of these characters offer a first glimpse of Lucia. Mostly though they focus on their subject as they go about the tasks assigned. Lucia is subsidiary, often something of a nuisance. This sets the tone for how she was treated in life.
Lucia is depicted as an object that others must deal with. If she will not comply she must be tamed. Children are expected to behave, denied agency ‘for their own good’ with resulting complaints dismissed. Troublesome little girls can be threatened to silence them.
Lucia’s relationships with various family members, especially her brother, are vividly dealt with. Whatever other’s behaviour, it is she who will stand accused of spoiling things for everyone if she protests.
As a young woman Lucia was considered beautiful. She clashed with her mother which led to her being incarcerated. The cutting edge treatments for mental illnesses at the time were experimental and horrifying.
Lucia was moved around as a cure for her behaviour was sought. After the war she was transferred to an asylum in Northampton where she spent her remaining decades. She was buried here, away from her family. Even in death they sought to silence her.
The fragmentary style of writing and the distractions of the narrators are effectively harnessed to portray the instability that was a signature in Lucia’s life. The reader is offered glimpses but always at the periphery. There is a sense of detachment, a tacit acceptance that those who will not behave as society requires are a nuisance to be subdued and hidden away.
Yet this is a story that pulses with emotion. Lucia rises inexorably from the page. The author has filled out the gaps in her history with a story that whilst unsettling resonates. That he does so with such flair and aplomb makes this a recommended read.
birdwithabrain's review
5.0
Alex Pheby's writing is fantastic. The imagery this book evokes is vivid and moving - at times shocking, but never graphic for graphic's sake. As a historical account it may be wildly inaccurate, but it is certainly a beautifully written piece of lierature.
This is a fictional account of the life of Lucia Joyce - the daughter of Irish author James Joyce - who trained as a dancer but spent 50 years of her life institutionalised, with varying diagnoses of schizophrenia and cyclothymia (a precursor of bipolar disorder). Very little is known about Lucia. The majority of the letters between her and her father were destroyed, or have been kept out of the public domain. After her father's death in 1941, she appears to have had very little contact with the outside world. She became just another mad woman left to rot in silence, forgotten, in an insitution.
There have been various attempts to chronicle Lucia's life over the years, although this is the first I have read. It is a very clever book. Some of the claims Pheby makes are shocking, although he takes great care to ensure the reader knows they are merely conjecture. However, this book doesn't try to be an accurate biography of a life. What is does is paint a beautiful picture in the reader's mind of a character, a personality, which may or may not have been Lucia's. It hypothesises events that may have shaped that mind, and the opinions that characters surrounding her may have held about her. The focus is not on facts, but on feelings.
I will be interested to see the opinions of those who have read other 'biographies' of Lucia, or even of her father James. I expect this will compare very favourably.
This is a fictional account of the life of Lucia Joyce - the daughter of Irish author James Joyce - who trained as a dancer but spent 50 years of her life institutionalised, with varying diagnoses of schizophrenia and cyclothymia (a precursor of bipolar disorder). Very little is known about Lucia. The majority of the letters between her and her father were destroyed, or have been kept out of the public domain. After her father's death in 1941, she appears to have had very little contact with the outside world. She became just another mad woman left to rot in silence, forgotten, in an insitution.
There have been various attempts to chronicle Lucia's life over the years, although this is the first I have read. It is a very clever book. Some of the claims Pheby makes are shocking, although he takes great care to ensure the reader knows they are merely conjecture. However, this book doesn't try to be an accurate biography of a life. What is does is paint a beautiful picture in the reader's mind of a character, a personality, which may or may not have been Lucia's. It hypothesises events that may have shaped that mind, and the opinions that characters surrounding her may have held about her. The focus is not on facts, but on feelings.
I will be interested to see the opinions of those who have read other 'biographies' of Lucia, or even of her father James. I expect this will compare very favourably.
More...