Imagining Nora Barnacle’s Love Letters to James Joyce Image

James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, seated on a wall in Zurich.

“The fact is no one should be able to read the intimate words that anyone writes to their partner—those outpourings are composed for two people only: the lover and the loved. But when you’re writing a novel about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, and the letters are published and are, well, just there, they become impossible to ignore. Whenever I told anyone I was writing a bio-fictional novel about Nora and Joyce, they would remark, with glow-eyed glee, ‘Oh, no doubt you’ll include the letters.’ And, yes, I have included them. But not quite as you might think. ...”

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