Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes

Chairperson: Stacey Herbert

‘This exquisite and moving book feels like a celebration, for all that there is so much sadness between its covers.’ The Guardian

Two tales of fathers and daughters come to life in a unique and intense marriage of minds.

‘Whatever spark of gift I possess has been transmitted to Lucia,’ James Joyce once said of his troubled daughter. Yet Lucia Joyce spent almost her entire adult life in psychiatric care. Now her tragic story is retold in an extraordinary new graphic memoir-cum-biography by husband and wife team Mary and Bryan Talbot.

Dotters of Her Father’s Eyes contrasts Lucia’s own coming-of-age story – her dance studies with Isadora Duncan, her infatuation with Samuel Beckett, her therapy with Carl Jung and final descent into madness – with that of Mary Talbot herself. Talbot is an acclaimed author, scholar and daughter of the eminent but frighteningly authoritarian Joycean academic James S. Atherton.  Both narratives are played out to the striking visual storytelling of award-winning graphic novel pioneer Bryan Talbot (Alice in Sunderland, Grandville).

Following in the footsteps of such modern classics as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapis’ Persepolis, Dotters of Her Father’s Eyes is an essential addition to the ever-evolving genre of graphic memoir.