I bought this in anticipation of learning more about the life of Norah Barnacle, the wife of James Joyce, having already enjoyed the experience that Nuala O’Connor created in her wonderful novel Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce. O’Connor succeeds in creating a well rounded character and depicts the precarious situation this young couple endure, trying to survive on meagre freelance writings living as expats in a tumultuous Europe.

I knew that this would be different, because Mary Morrissy takes a significant turning point in their relationship and changes everything that happens to them beyond that day. After they have left/eloped from Dublin, been to Paris and now arriving in Trieste, Italy to begin their lives anew. This reimagined period in their lives covers a mere ten years, from their arrival in Trieste on 20 October, 1904 to their return to Dublin on 15 June 1915.

A Sliding Doors Moment

Norah has enough experience to know what she doesn’t want and had already given Jim (the way she refers to James) a few ultimatums, one of them is not to leave her stranded, having been stood up before. So how long will a young woman wait, suitcase in hand, in a foreign country before deciding that she has been left?

This is the point where the author diverges from historical fact and after more than 9 hours waiting at the station, allows Nora to depart with someone other than the man she refers to as her husband Jim.

She’d thought of telling him how she waited for Jim, ten whole hours outside the railway station in Trieste, like a fool, the darkness falling and she weak from hunger, and still no sign of him. And not a farthing on her. Abandoned.

The novel begins four years later, in June 1916, back in Dublin; a day when we learn she is the owner of a boarding house and she leaves to go and wait outside a concert hall. We learn that the day before a man has come calling for her. Before the details of what this is about or who it is that visited – was it Jim or was it a foreign man she is clearly no longer with? It takes 40 pages, with many, many flashbacks – for her to descend the stairs to learn who is/was waiting for her, a clue to why she was waiting outside the concert hall. Snippets of the present, long swathes of memory.

She was Mrs Norah Smith now – that’s how she’d signed the contracts of sale, with the H back in her name that Jim Joyce had made her drop. She was Norah, after Hanorah, her grand-aunt. And she wasn’t going to let anyone from her past put her down.

The novel then goes back 10 years to the train station in Trieste and the intervening story unfolds. Despite having not waited for him, Jim is never far from her thoughts and much about her new life causes her to relive episodes of their short time together.

Penelope ‘Unbound‘ did create an expectation that she might therefore create a life where she acquired some independence, perhaps some may perceive that she did. She remains bound to a household, perhaps even more so, due to her inability to speak the language and never entirely accepted by its inhabitants, apart from the one who rescued her.

Empowerment or Good Fortune?

The fact that it takes that many pages for the reader to learn what happens to Norah is the reason I don’t go into detail here, because that is the mystery at the centre of the story and the only true departure from historical fact. That realisation is for the prospective reader to wonder about and to discover themselves.

Her predicament in being tied to one person and household, dependent on him for everything, will ultimately provide her her liberty, because he will have created an unsustainable predicament for himself. But did Norah take charge of her destiny, or was she left with no choice?

She doesn’t know why but she finds her temper flaring. These men and their principles. With the Other Fella, it was marriage and how he couldn’t put a ring on her finger because of Mother Church, for crying out loud. But it was less of the church and more of the mother, if you asked Norah. His own poor ma was afflicted by that wastrel she married, and Jim said he had the same streak in him, and he’d only do the same to her. And why couldn’t you just stop yourself, she asked him, but she got no reply.

A Season or a Lifetime

For me, the most significant decision she would make, was at the moment the second man abandons her, leaving her with some means. What she decides to do from that moment forward, is the true moment of ‘Penelope Unbound’, however it marks the end of the novel, not the beginning of her story.

As too often happens (I remember a similar feeling reading Hadley Richardson’s story in The Paris Wife), when the significant other (the famous writer, the man) exits the narrative, the story ends. Is the story more interesting learning how she came to obtain her independence, or what she might do, once she gets it?

And after all those years apart, we will wonder, do soulmates always find each in the end, even when they can not be together?

Further Reading

Guardian Review: Penelope Unbound by Mary Morrissy, masterly alternative life of Norah Barnacle by John Banville

My review of Mother of Pearl by Mary Morrissy

Author, Mary Morrissy

Dublin born Mary Morrissy is the author of three novels, Mother of Pearl, The Pretender and The Rising of Bella Casey, and two collections of stories, Lazy Eye and Prosperity Drive. Her short fiction has been anthologized widely and two of her novels have been nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. Her debut, Mother of Pearl was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award and she is the recipient of a Hennessy Literary Award.

She is a journalist, a teacher of creative writing and a literary mentor. She blogs on art, fiction and history at marymorrissy.com