Live music Review: Nora Barnacle - National Concert Hall, Dublin

3/5

It’s a cliche to say that James Joyce would not have been the writer he was without Nora Barnacle. It’s also somewhat inaccurate, but his books would have been very different, that is certain.

His relationship with Nora became central to his artistic imagination. She is woven into his most famous passages: Gretta’s overhearing ‘The Lass of Aughrim’ in The Dead, Molly’s soliloquy in Ulysses, the very cadences of Finnegans Wake. In a real sense, she put words in his mouth.