The Joyce Girl

By: Annabel Abbs

Narrated by: Leith McPherson

James Joyce was her father. Samuel Beckett was her lover. This is her story. A mesmerising fictionalisation of Lucia Joyce's life told for the first time.

Paris, 1928. Avant-garde Paris is buzzing with the latest ideas in art, music and literature from artists such as Ford Madox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald. Lucia, the talented and ambitious daughter of controversial genius James Joyce, is making her name as a dancer. But when Lucia falls passionately in love with budding writer (and fellow Irish expat) Samuel Beckett he is banned from the Joyce family home.

1934. Her life in tatters, Lucia is sent to pioneering psychoanalyst Carl Jung. For years she has kept quiet. Now she decides to speak.

Profoundly moving and stunningly written, The Joyce Girl brings to light the untold tale of Lucia Joyce. It will entrance and educate you. You will fall in love with this compelling woman, but she will break your heart too.

Critic reviews

A hugely impressive debut. Annabel Abbs has brought to life an extraordinary cast of characters - Joyce, Beckett et al. - and painted their rackety, bohemian world in vivid technicolour.

Here is a powerful portrait of a young woman yearning to be an artist, whose passion for life and rage at being unable to fulfil her talent burns from the pages.

Funny, clever, tragic, poignant

This intimate and absolutely splendid novel must top my recommendations as the best 20th-century fiction of the year

An absorbing read about the perils of genius. You'll like this book if you enjoy thoughtful historical fiction that transports you to another time and place.

Avant-garde Paris in the 1920s bursts onto the page in this gripping fictionalisation of an extraordinary life.

I cannot recommend it enough

Here is Lucia Joyce, vibrant, passionate and alive, telling her own story... Annabel Abbs has crafted a moving tale of thwarted ambition and personal tragedy.

Annabel Abbs has found a gripping and little-known story at the heart of one of the twentieth century's most astonishing creative moments, researched it deeply and brought the extraordinary Joyce family and their circle in 1920s Paris to richly imagined life.