I was very engaged by this novel, which uses well-known real historical figures, but then applies a “what if?” scenario to a crucial moment in their lives. James Joyce, when arriving in Trieste in 1904 in search of a job at the Berlitz language school, left Nora Barnacle, with whom he’d left Ireland, to wait for him at the railway station. What if she’d felt abandoned, and had gone on to forge a different life? Mary Morrissy imagines that life in this novel, which really demands that you know something of Joyce and his work to fully appreciate it. It’s a richly rewarding experience in any case. I reviewed it for Shiny New Books here.
Penelope Unbound by Dr Rob Spence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.