Book review: Mary Morrissy asks ‘what if Nora never waited?’ in Penelope Unbound

Author Mary Morrissy researched the lives of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, as well as the historical background, assiduously, to take readers on an alternate journey to the past

Fri, 29 Sep, 2023 - 22:00

Review: Alannah Hopkin

Here is a treat for admirers of James Joyce and his enigmatic wife, Nora Barnacle. The young Galway woman was working as a chambermaid at Finn’s Hotel in Dublin when she first met the scruffy former student and aspiring writer. Joyce set his great novel Ulysses on June 16, 1904 in memory of their first date, and the day is celebrated every year when crowds throng the streets of Dublin in Edwardian dress.

The hotel is long closed, but the words “Finn’s Hotel” can still be read on the building near the bus stop on Nassau St, and many readers look up at its sunlit façade and remember Nora and James.

As well as two short story collections, Mary Morrissy has published three award-winning novels based on historical characters.

Once again she shows her ability to present us with a richly detailed alternative reality based on the known facts. I expected her to do a good job, but I did not expect it to be laugh-aloud funny as well as taking some imaginative leaps that will literally take your breath away.

Nora has been the subject of a full-length biography by Brenda Maddox, adapted into a film, and a novel, Nora by Nuala O’Connor, which was last year’s choice for Dublin’s One City One Book promotion. Though their letters reveal a strong erotic bond, people seem endlessly curious as to what the great modernist saw in Nora.

James and Nora were madly in love and remained so through many trials. Initially I wondered if we really need another Nora book, but it only took a few pages to realise that Morrissy’s novel is quite extraordinary — essential reading as well as being hugely enjoyable.

Soon after first meeting, Joyce invited Nora to accompany him abroad where he hoped to find a job teaching English. Arriving at Trieste penniless, Joyce left Nora outside the railway station with their luggage while he went looking for money. He ran into trouble, and Nora was left alone all day and the following night in a city where she knew no one and didn’t speak the language. In real life, she waited for him; the novel asks the question, what if she hadn’t?

Suppose she was not there when Joyce came back — where could she have gone and what could have happened to her?

The novel works well because Morrissy has researched the couple’s lives and the historical background assiduously. As she says in a note, she did a great deal of research into James and Nora’s lives in order to depart from the facts. But also, and more importantly, Morrissy has imagined her way into Nora’s head, and shows us the proceedings through Nora’s unflinching eyes. Uneducated maybe, but she is not stupid.

When a stranger, seeing her alone with the luggage addresses her as See Norah, she wonders how he knows her name. Later she is addressed as Signora Bareknuckle. She has many battles with the Italian language, whose speakers she describes as “divils for dragging the arse out of words”.

At the start of the novel, we meet Nora 11 years after leaving Dublin.

She is now Mrs Smith, the owner of Finn’s Hotel. Having caught up with her story, Joyce reappears in the narrative, in Dublin to give a recital as an operatic tenor. He too has a fully documented alternative life, and a young wife. The novel ends on June 16, 1915, on an intriguingly ambiguous note. Will Nora and James get together again? Is the attraction still strong enough to overcome their circumstances? Like the rest of the novel, the possibilities are totally intriguing.