Penelope Unbound by Mary Morrissy: What if Nora Barnacle hadn’t waited on James Joyce?

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’re in a bind over the inclination to revive histories of women’s lives, commit them to fiction or celebrate long-forgotten figures. There is much to be celebrated about this trend. Unearthing and amplifying women’s hardships, successes, and ground-breaking contributions to history and society is a worthy venture. But I do wonder about books written about the “wives of” writers, as if matrimony to these men is their defining achievement. Why can’t we explore these women’s lives on their own terms, without an attachment to their spouse? Still, I had high hopes for Mary Morrissy’s Penelope Unbound, which bills itself as a “speculative narrative” unfurling a story spun around the premise: what if Nora Barnacle didn’t wait on James Joyce at Trieste station? In reality, Barnacle waited. But Morrissy seeks a new existence for Nora, where she walks away. Disappointingly, the exploration of that idea remains tethered to Joyce, through flashbacks and memories.

[ Founding feathers – Frank McNally on the surname Barnacle and other Irish oddities ]

“Nothing stirs in the thrumming silence except the call of these old stories,” Morrissy writes. This is the problem with Penelope Unbound: it remains bound to Joyce. Throughout, references are made to the act of saying yes or specifying that it was not said. An obvious Ulysses echo of Molly Bloom’s response to the proposal by Leopold Bloom: “Yes, I said yes, I will yes.” In one instance, Barnacle signs a letter “but still she did not say yes”. And in a decisive closing moment, she utters: “Yes, she says ... I am yes.” It is in these allusions that Penelope fails to be truly “speculative”, as Barnacle and Joyce remain tied by the “thin thread of longing”. I couldn’t help but hope that Morrissy would give Nora a freedom to be untethered, instead of speculative fiction within the parameters of the entirely possible and plausible.

There is clear talent here, as to be expected from writer of the Whitbread Prize shortlisted novel Mother of Pearl. The prose is great throughout, but there is a distracting stylistic choice. Some words – usually cities or nationalities – are spelt phonetically: “Paree” occurs twice in one page. Then there’s Zoorick. And Eyetalians. And also “Ahrish”. But, strangely, not Landan, which remains correctly spelled. It is terribly off-putting and lets the skills of the writer down.