Dotter of Her Father's Eyes (2012)

Won: Costa Biography Award, 2012. The first graphic work to win a Costa Award, in a year when the Costa judges shortlisted two graphic novels. Mary Talbot sets her own childhood with a cold, Joyce-obsessed scholar father beside the life of Lucia Joyce, James Joyce's daughter, whose ambitions as a dancer were thwarted. Bryan Talbot's art shifts palette between the two timelines, so you always know where you are. It is a quiet, sharp book about fathers and daughters, and a good choice for readers who come to it through Joyce rather than through comics.