We owe Mr Bowker a debt of gratitude for his considerable courage in undertaking this mammoth task.
Hugh McFadden
Books Ireland
Detailed, thoughtful and illuminating, Gordon Bowker's portrait of the inimitable artist is sympathetic, challenging and thoroughly entertaining.
Good Book Guide
This new biography is both learned and readable. It is an admirable monument to ... Read morea brilliant yet often unfortunate man whose star still shines.
John Hinton
Catholic Herald
A wonderfully lively and meticulously researched account of the life and work of a fascinatingly inexplicable paradox.... wonderfully detailed, gripping...
Chris Proctor
The Tribune
Bowker has already written brilliantly on Malcolm Lowry and George Orwell and this new book extends the record ? and not only the record, but the entire epistemology of the Joycean discourse... has restored Joyce to his contradictory, ambivalent humanity... shrewd and highly readable biography.
Thomas McCarthy
Irish Examiner
Reading Bowker on the genesis of Finnegans Wake make me want to read it again.
Tibor Fischer
STANDPOINT
good time for a strong new biography of James Joyce, 70 years after his death and almost 30 since the revised version of Richard Ellmann's classic contribution to the form...Bowker devotes a greater proportion of his book to Joyce's life after Ulysses than Ellmann does, the period of his physical decline, obsession with the mental health of Lucia, and dogged engagement with the night games of what became Finnegans Wake.
Adam Mars-Jones
THE OBSERVER
informed by many new biographical sources and discoveries... a usefully demystifying version of the life of one of the 20th century's most complicated literary artists.
NEW STATESMAN
Gordon Bowker's new biography of James Joyce draws on new materialto explore in greater depth than ever before the life and legacy of this extraordinary writer.
CHOICE
The author excels in his wit, clarity and sheer readability as he tackles in full the life of Ireland's greatest writer.
METRO
a very accessible and solid biography.
Lesley McDowell
THE SCOTSMAN
This is an entertainingly readable biography of a genius.
BELFAST TELEGRAPH
a readable, reliable biography in a new voice
Iain Finlayson
THE TIMES
This sound, hefty biography is enjoyable and fair...
Peter Lewis
DAILY MAIL
Bowker's biography - packed as it is with incidents, ideas and sympathy - proves inspiring
Richard Davenport-Hines
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
a sound and readable telling of the writer's tale for newcomers, into whose hands it may be given without a qualm.
LITERARY REVIEW
a scrupulously researched, entertainingly readable biography of a maddeningly protean, contradictory genius.
John Walsh
THE INDEPENDENT
This biography is both learned and readable; it is an attractive monument to a brilliant, kind-hearted, often unfortunate man.
Edmund Gordon
THE SUNDAY TIMES
A great read for anyone remotely into Joyce
The Catholic Herald
Only the second major biography of the author to appear since his death in 1941.
Sunday Business Post
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