This April, we’re looking at another autobiographical graphic novel, with a twist. Linking her experiences with her own father, a Joycean scholar, to James Joyce’s relationship with his daughter, Lucia, Mary M. Talbot asks us questions about father-daughter relationships and women’s liberation. Dotter of her Father’s Eyes charts Lucia Joyce’s (inevitable) descent into psychiatric care as she struggles to assert her own professional desires in the face of her parents’ expectations of subservience to her father’s art. This experience is mirrored in Talbot’s own childhood and teenage years as her father’s domineering and narcissistic personality control the household. The narrative plays with the breakdown of relationships between tyrannical fathers, powerless mothers and their daughters’ rage.
In order to keep the three narratives straight – Lucia Joyce, Young Mary Talbot and Adult Mary Talbot – the narrative uses different colours for each timeline. It switches from a full colour palette for the modern day, to muted browns and oranges to shades of blue for Lucia. Bryan Talbot’s art style is warm and engaging, with a few footnotes written by Mary Talbot to playfully pinpoint some errors (instead of having Bryan Talbot re-do several panels of artwork).
The book was received positively by critics after its publication in 2012 and won the 2012 Costa biography award. It is a quick, captivating read that touches on diverse themes such as classicism, modernism, gender, mental health and even academia. Interested? We have several copies in the David Wilson Library for you to take out!
Do you have any suggestions for the recommendation list? Graphic Novels that we should be reading? Let us know by sending an email to edd3@le.ac.uk.
By Esther De Dauw
