House Of Names: A Novel

"Colm Tóibín, no stranger to fraught family dynamics and themes of loss, exile and return, wanders far from the Ireland and Brooklyn we’ve seen in his earlier books to take on the House of Atreus, the mother of all dysfunctional families, in this violent, psychologically astute page turner. In visceral, accessible language, Tóibín reanimates the revenge tragedies of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and their three children, Iphigeneia, Electra and Orestes. He makes us feel Clytemnestra’s anguished outrage when her husband sacrifices their eldest daughter in hopes of favorable winds for his warships and adds intimate sagas of suffering not found in the ancient Greeks."