With Dotter of Her Father's Eyes
The Talbots don't deliberately try to aggrandize Mary's troubles with her father, and they can't help but seem trivial compared to what Joyce did to his daughter: stifled her career, and any chance at an independent life, and drove her into an asylum for the rest of her life. James Atherton might have been a cold British mid-20th century father, but he wasn't the self-obsessed monster Joyce was -- or, perhaps, Mary Atherton had opportunities in the '60s in England that weren't available in the same way to Lucia Joyce in the '30s. Either way, Mary Talbot makes Mary Atherton look like the lightweight side of the comparison, which isn't good for the book -- Dotter could have been stronger if it had focused entirely on Lucia, whose life provides more than enough drama for a story twice the length.
Of course, that would be a sadder and drearier Dotter, which clearly wasn't the Talbots' intention -- comparing Mary with Lucia allows Mary's life to be a positive example and a potential escape. Still, it does feel unbalanced: Lucia's is clearly the deeper, more dramatic story, and Mary's life, in this context, is interesting mostly due to the parallels, which isn't entirely fair to the writer telling the story of her own life.
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