James and Nora

Edna O'Brien

One of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers turns her attention to one of the country's greatest novelists: James Joyce and his relationship with Nora Barnacle - in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the iconic classic ULYSSES.

'Both Joyce and O'Brien have a gift for beauty distilled . . . a work of love'
Daily Telegraph

'Short poetic and powerful'
Irish Times

It was June 10th Barnacle Day. He saw her in Nassau Street and they stopped to talk. She thought his blue eyes were those of a Norseman. He was twenty-two and she Nora Barnacle was twenty and employed as a chambermaid in Finn's Hotel. They agreed to meet on June 14th outside No. 1 Merrion Square the home of Sir William Wilde but Nora did not turn up. After a dejected letter from Joyce they met on June 16th a date which came to be immortalized in literature as Bloomsday.

Edna O'Brien paints a miniature portrait of an artist idealist insurgent and filled with a secret loneliness. In Nora he was to find accomplice collaborator and muse. For all their sexual escalations Joyce considered their relationship 'a kind of sacrament'. Their life was one of wandering emotional upheaval and poverty. It was also one that was binding and mysterious and defied all the mores of intimacy.

In prose brimming with life and energy Edna O'Brien resurrects a relationship of magnificent intensity on the page and in doing so shows herself to be touched by the genius of the writer she loves above all others.