Hermione Lee reviews Carol Loeb Schloss’s
new book about Lucia Joyce here.

Here’s an excerpt from this interesting
review - two actually:

“ 'Lucia Joyce': No She Said No” :

“I quote so much because this sort of fervid
glop is served up on many pages. It is a
rhetoric that damages the book's credibility,
making it read more like an exercise in wish
fulfillment than a biography.......

......The best feature of Shloss's book is its
vivid, informed description of these experi-
mental dance groups in 1920's Europe, and
her account of how Lucia came into contact
with modernism and surrealism while her
father was writing the ''Wake.''

I did NOT get this book for Christmas, should
anyone be wondering.

The Punishment Book at Clongowes was
where the Jesuits kept track of all the
pandyings and other punishments meted
out to students. Bruce Bradley, author of
James Joyce’s Schooldays, searched through
Clongowes archives and found the Punishment
Book for the 1880s. Three pandyings of James
Joyce are listed including one on the 14th of
March 1889, when Joyce received four strokes
for the rare offense of “vulgar language”.
Joyce was seven years old.