Title House of Names Series --- Author Colm Tóibín Cover Art Nicholas Ayer Publisher McClelland & Stewart - 2017 First Printing 2017 Category Mythology Warnings None Website colmtoibin.com Main Characters Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra, Aegisthus Main Elements Mythology

"I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's side of the story, the raging, grieving mother who plots the murder of her husband, King Agamemnon, on his return from war.

House of Names unfolds this tragic saga where one bloody action leads inexorably to another: how Agamemnon deceived their eldest daughter Iphigenia, with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her to make the winds blow in his favour and take his army to Troy; how Clytemnestra seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed and her schemes; how she achieved vengeance for her husband's stunning betrayal - his quest for victory, greater than his love for his daughter; and how their two surviving children, Electra and Orestes - one a prisoner in her mother's palace, the other escaped and in hiding - seek revenge themselves against their own mother.

Colm Tóibín bring a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives these characters startlingly vivid new life. He brilliantly inhabits the minds of some of Greek's myth's most mesmerizing villains and heroes to reveal thei love, lust, pain and the relentless logic that governs everything they do. Told from the alternating perspectives of Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra, House of Names is a portrait of a family torn by love, hatred and jealousy - a fiercly dramatic and unforgettable novel from a master storyteller.

I've been reading various takes on the Trojan War this year, and when I found this book that was about something related but that happens after the war, I grabbed it right off the library shelf.

After reading other authors like Miller and McCullough I had really high expectations for this one that didn't quite come about. I found the sentences short and choppy so they didn't flow nicely and thus made it harder to read. I also didn't find myself becoming invested in any of the characters. I guess I was supposed to root for Orestes but he came off as a kind of wimp. He does indeed end up killing his mother, but in Toibin's version he doesn't kill Aegisthus which was I thought a key part of the myth. To be fair to Toibin, there isn't as much source material for this story so he had to make up some details on his own, and there are several versions floating about, perhaps in one Aegisthus does live.

But I felt one bit was confusing. So Orestes is just a boy when Iphigenia, his sister, is sacrificed, just as the army is sailing off to Troy. What happens next in Agamemnon's realm seems to happen virtually overnight, and next thing we know Agamemnon is back. But the Trojan War took 10 years, Orestes is still acting like a child when he returns, like he didn't age at all. This was offputting, either those 10 years were not taken into account (and it felt that way) or Orestes was a overgrown toddler by the time his father returned.

Then Orestes is kidnapped, where he escapes and spends five years in hiding before he returns to take revenge. At that point He must be nearly twenty (10 for the war, 5 for hiding, and he could talk/walk/swordfight when the war started so say he was 5 at the start), but even though he sort of acts like a man at times, he certainly isn't treated like one by anyone. Thus making him less interesting a protagonist than most 13-year old characters in middle grade stories that have to save the world on their own. In fact Orestes doesn't do anything at all without help. Yes, this book is intended to be more historically accurate and more realistic than a middle-grade novel, but Leander at least gets to go off and fight with the rebels, Orestes just sort of slinks about the palace waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

And finally, we are missing how the whole thing ends, after Orestes kills his mother does he finally get to inherit his father's throne? Or does Leander take over since people are too appalled at the matricide to accept him as king?

Much as I didn't love this book, it did take on a more obscure aspect of a bigger epic and for that I am still glad to have read it. Sure Achilles and Odysseus have the more exciting stories, but even the minor characters have tales to tell that can at times be equally engaging.