A moving recreation of the tortured life of Lucia Joyce, the schizophrenic daughter of James Joyce, follows Lucia's struggle to survive despite the terrifying effects of this devastating mental illness. 15,000 first printing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
James Joyce's most inscrutable creation may have been his only daughter, Lucia--mad to the world, but a genius to her father. In this haunting work of imaginative reconstruction, Gold (coauthor of Anne Frank Remembered ) renders Lucia as a gifted albeit genuine schizophrenic (first treated by Jung, later institutionalized for 47 years) who was subject to delusions and violent impulses. Her father preferred to consider her clairvoyant rather than insane, and regarded her "nonsense" as Delphic wisdom with meaning for a select few. Gold briefly, movingly evokes Lucia's life through a cryptic collage of dreams, flashbacks and hallucinations; through Lucia's compositions, ranging from libretti to memoirs whose prose echoes the rhythms and syntax of her father's; and through the commonsensical asides of her nurse, Mrs. Leary. Although the author asserts that "No use has been made of medical records or intimate letters that invade family privacy. The course of Miss Joyce's illness after 1935 has been largely imagined." Discernible factual details about Joyce's works and family, however, may cause some readers to lose their footing on the trail between fact and fantasy and lead others to wonder about Gold's suggestions of incest and neglect. Though Clairvoyant opens an intriguing window on Lucia's life, more clarity, not more mystery, would have heightened the poignancy of her story.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Gold's first novel (Anne Frank Remembered, with Miep Gies, 1987) rather captivatingly admits its debt to the large body of established ``truth'' in telling this otherwise imaginary story of Lucia Joyce's life as the tormented daughter of a towering literary genius. James Joyce--as Gold points out in an afterword--never entirely admitted that his daughter was insane, but instead hoped to see her mental aberrations as evidence of perceptive genius. Few will be able to agree with him as--in Gold's version--the beautiful Lucia throws chairs at her mother, sets fire to rooms, claws wildly at her own throat, and fears that her hands have become disconnected from her body. All is not violence and horror, however, and whether Gold makes a case (or intends to) for Lucia's ``genius,'' she does bring to life a creature of great pathos as Lucia grows up with her famous parents in Trieste and Paris, becomes a dancer and then stops dancing, has a bevy of suitors (including Samuel Beckett), and begins the downward spiral of anguish and craziness that will take her to a seemingly endless chain of hospitals and doctors (including Jung) and finally to the rest of her life permanently institutionalized. Much of Gold's novel takes the form of a ``memoir'' written by Lucia, and in its pages come alive not only exquisitely revealing details of life in the Joyce household, but also the flair and flavor of 1930's Paris, peopled with the likes of Chagall, Calder, Beckett, and the Joyces themselves--as war draws slowly nearer, and as Lucia grows slowly more mad. Remembering, late in her life, being left by her parents in a Brittany hospital on the eve of war, Lucia writes, pathetically: ``I never saw either of my parents again and wait for them to this very day.'' From well-worn sources, a moving transformation into fiction of a life of suffering and--perhaps so--perception. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not very imaginative,
By Jane S. (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Clairvoyant: The Imagined Life of Lucia Joyce : A Novel (Hardcover)
I was looking forward to reading this, as I am a big Joyce fan. I found this book boring, however, and considering it is a work of fiction, a little unimaginative. The speculations seem to hover in that murky place between fact and fiction.
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