Graham Joyce: biography, books, photos

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Graham Joyce is a unique master of magical realism who has written the kind of books that we all our lives want to find, but, unfortunately, very rarely find.

Biography of Graham Joyce

Graham William Joyce is better known in literary circles as Joyce Graham. The biography of the writer was not distinguished by any significant events. He was born in the small town of Coventry in 1954. The father of the future celebrity was a simple miner. Graham graduated from Leicester University in 1980. The topic of his master's thesis was devoted to Thomas Pynchon. The training took place at the local college Bishop Lonsdale. Everything was like a normal average young man.

After graduating, I went to work for an organization called the National Association of Youth Clubs, which specialized in re-educating troubled teenagers. Thus, his craving for psychology began to manifest itself from an early age. He worked there for more than eight years.

Already in the last years of his work, Graham Joyce began to think seriously about the career of a writer. Immediately after his dismissal, he goes to live on the Greek island of Lesvos. Inspired by the environment, he writes his first serious work called Dreamside.(1988 - 1989). The creative nature of the young writer does not let up, and he goes on a long journey through the Middle East.

In it, he finally decides to pursue a professional creative career and chooses a quiet life in England as a haven for this. He moves to Leicester.

Writer's work

Graham's work cannot be attributed to any one genre. His works have incorporated aspects of science fiction, fantasy, traditional horror, mainstream, but at the same time filled with supernatural, metaphysical and psychological overtones. Most literary critics believe that his thinking was shaped by Latin American writers such as Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And his works are called "magically realistic".

However, the author himself does not agree with this. Graham Joyce claims that his development as an author was influenced by the works of Algeron Blackwood and Arthur Machen. And the works are rather related to the heat of weird tale. In an interview with the famous Locus magazine, he admitted that he is trying to create works that are completely different from his previous works, but at the same time maintain a balance between the irrational and the rational.

Achievements of a young writer

Graham still manages to create absolutely different works. And a large number of awards and nominations confirm this. The vast majority of works were awarded honorary awards. Annual award for "Best Novel of the Year"four of his works were awarded by the British Fantasy Society: The Tooth Fairy, Dark Sister, Requiem, and Indigo.

In other no less significant World Fantasy and Imaginaire nominations, the winners are The Facts of Life and Smoking Poppy. These works are also of great interest to literary critics. By the way, writing the last of them was preceded by a two-week excursion to Thailand, where Graham Joyce studied the life of one of the tribes. It specializes in the cultivation of opium poppy.

Throughout his creative career, Joyce Graham, in addition to outstanding works, has created a large number of no less unique stories. The best of them were collected in the author's book Partial Eclipse and Other Stories, as well as in the collections of stories In Dreams, Eurotemps and Darklands 2.

Smoking the Poppy Novel

The work “Smoking the poppy” is an absolutely uncompromising and brightly hallucinatory novel, which simply does not exist. He tells the life situation of a simple electrician from England, whose life turned upside down after he was informed about the detention of his daughter. It turns out that she was trying to smuggle a cargo of opium out of Thailand. To help his daughter, he takes his eldest son and partner in the intellectual game. Once in Thailand, he finds himself at the very epicenter of the huge spinning mechanism of the drug trade. On one side are the so-called opium generals, and on the other, centuries-oldbeliefs of opium-gathering tribes.

In this deadly fight, he has to fight not only for the life of his own daughter, but also for her soul.

The Truth of Life novel

This work is simply unique, which describes family relationships, love, war and, of course, magic. In the center of events is one family of seven daughters, led by Martha. Frank, born at the end of the war, is passed in a circle between all the daughters, and Cassie, his mother, suffers from serious nervous disorders. A little boy tries to find his place in the community by learning the trade of embalming. He has a secret mystical friend - a Man who is behind glass and speaks only to Frank. The boy also begins to realize that he is developing the gift of foresight.

Tooth Fairy Novel

This work is the most famous of those created by Graham Joyce. Reviews of the book are only positive, and, importantly, even among literary critics. It is presented in the genre of magical realism.

The Tooth Fairy novel is based on an old belief that if a small child puts a fallen baby tooth under the pillow, the Tooth Fairy will exchange it for a coin at night, while the child is sleeping.

The work describes one of the cases when something went wrong. The novel begins with Sam, a seven-year-old boy, putting a fallen milk tooth under his pillow and falling asleep in the hope of finding a coin there in the morning. But things don't work out the way they're supposed to, and it's all because SamI woke up at night and saw the Tooth Fairy. The worst thing for the boy is that she is presented not as a benevolent cute princess, but as a sexless evil creature. But the surprises don't end there. It turns out that it will accompany the boy until the end of his youth. At the same time, constantly threatening, scaring, but occasionally helping him.

Unfortunately, the unique writer passed away at the age of sixtieth. However, the name Graham Joyce, books and his unique perception of literary art will delight us with their fantasticness for a long time.

The last years of his life, Graham Joyce continued to live in England in the city of Leicester, but with two children and his wife Susanna Johnson. In addition to his creative career, he shared his skills with others at Nottingham Trent University by teaching creative writing.

September 9, 2014, after a long and serious illness, he passed away.