Colm Toibin

House of Names

Moray Lyle McIntosh

I received a free advance copy of this novel in return for an honest, unbiased review.

I had high hopes for this work. I haven't read and Tóibín but I have heard good things and I have an endless fascination with retellings of ancient myths and folk tales but I was sadly disappointed.

The story of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra has everything you would expect from a Greek myth: war, death, murder, kidnapping, betrayals, affairs and Clytemnestra has long been vilified as one of the bad women of literature, making her a prime candidate for a modern rehabilitation or at least a more nuanced portrayal. I suppose Tóibín does this, at least he allows her to be a betrayed, grieving mother rather than simply a power-hungry, devious harpy. Unfortunately she, and the rest of her doomed family remain totally untouchable, kept at an infuriating distance from the reader by a constant chilly, detached tone. For all the professions and dramatic acts of love, hatred, and wrath I simply couldn't feel these emotions in the characters or any emotion for them.
Descriptive elements are almost totally lacking; characters, settings, feelings all absent or just barely sketched out.
When coupled with prose that is dull and rather workmanlike and a lack of decent dialogue we are left with a dry lifeless narrative. Who would have thought that such a terribly blood-soaked could be dreadfully dull? 

If you have a penchant for insightfully told myths you can't do better than to skip this uninspired addition and go straight to the work of Christa Wolf who has done some sterling work on Medea and Cassandra.

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'They cut her hair before they dragged her to the place of sacrifice. Her mouth was gagged to stop her cursing her father, her cowardly, two-tongued father. Nonetheless, they heard her muffled screams.' On the day of his daughter's wedding, Agamemnon orders her sacrifice. His daughter is led to her death, and Agamemnon leads his army into battle, where he is rewarded with glorious victory. Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act. House of Names is a story of intense longing and shocking betrayal. It is a work of great beauty, and daring, from one of our finest living writers.

Jade Flynn

Read for my Ancient Runes O.W.L 2019 (read a retelling) - I read Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary in 2015 and I still think about it four years later so I put off reading anything else by him because I had such high expectations for so long. I'm also exceptionally hard to please with greek mythology retellings because I'm a long time lover of the classics. House of Names had a lot to live up to before I read the first page. 

It's safe to say that Tóibín is a glorious writer whether it be elegant descriptions or simple dialogue. The novel is told from three perspectives -Clytemnestra, Electra and Orestes. Clytemnestra's is clearly the supreme point of view with Electra's trailing behind and Orestes is just a wet wipe and uninteresting compared to the two women. It would've been a four star if Tóibín stuck with Clytemnestra the whole way through as the middle section faulted because of the switch. I found it to be an interesting interpretation on Aeschylus's The Curse of the House of Atreus and I highly recommend you read the original text if you enjoyed this or not.

Hannah Picken

Madhu kishore

Amelia Baumann

Hannah Swithinbank

Liz Prinz

Anna Ling

James Haliburton

From the bestselling and award-winning author of Brooklyn and Nora Webster"If there is a more brilliant writer than Toibin working today, I don't know who that would be" Karen Joy Fowler, Irish Times"T�ib�n creates suspense out of the simplest emotions: fear, love and, most poignantly, regret" TIMEFrom the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm T�ib�n comes this ambitious, violent and modern retelling of one of our oldest and most enduring stories.I HAVE BEEN ACQUAINTED WITH THE SMELL OF DEATH.Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, the murderess Clytemnestra tells of the deception of Agamemnon, how he sacrificed her eldest daughter - her beloved Iphigenia - to the Trojan campaign; how Clytemnestra used what power she had, seducing the prisoner Aegisthus, turning the government against its lord; plotting the many long years until her beacon fires announce the king's return ...Electra, daughter of a murdered father, loyal subject of the rightful king, studies Clytemnestra and her lover with cold anger and slow-burning cunning. She watches as they walk the gardens and corridors of the palace. She waits for the traitors to become complacent, to believe they are finally safe; she waits for her exiled brother, Orestes, for the boy to become a warrior, for fate to follow him home. She watches and she waits, until her spies announce her brother's return ...

House of Names

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