Dotter of her Father's Eyes by Mary Talbot and Bryan Talbot

If you loved Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, read Dotter of her Father's Eyes. Mary and Bryan Talbot, a husband and wife team, have created a compelling graphic novel memoir of Mary's fraught relationship with her difficult father, James Atherton. Atherton was an eminent Joycean scholar and a teacher. Dotter of her Father's Eyes also explores contrasts and parallels between Mary's childhood and that of James Joyce's daughter, Lucia.

Bryan Talbot changes art styles to differentiate between time periods: full colour Tintin-style panels for contemporary scenes; freeform page design in sepia tones on textured paper for Mary's childhood and adolescence (at times reminiscent of David Small's Stitches); and inky washes of dark blue with black for the Joyce family's unsettled life in Paris in the 1920s and '30s. As a young woman, Lucia Joyce began to make a name for herself as a dancer, but her parents dismissed and discouraged her talent. (The dance scenes brought Sabrina Jones' graphic novel biography, Isadora Duncan, to mind.) Sadly, Lucia ended up in a mental institution.

Father-daughter relationships and the restricted options available to women before and immediately after the second world war are the two main subjects in this intriguing book. I loved it.