Member Review
Review by
Anne O, Reviewer
This book covers the part of Clytemnestra’s story that isn’t usually told. And that is most of her life – her childhood and first marriage in a Sparta where the girls learn to fight as well as the boys; the many years married to Agamemnon in Mycenae – before the part we’re more familiar with either side of the Trojan war.
It’s a mark of how entrenched in the Homeric stories is our literary tradition (and how many of this type of story I’ve read in recent years) that I could so easily imagine myself in Sparta with Clytemnestra and Helen, their beloved siblings, difficult mother Leda and monstrous father Tyndareus. A common version of the myth is that Helen was the result of Zeus (disguised as a swan) raping Leda. Here, the more tantalising story is that Leda is rumoured to have had an affair with a foreign man; a rumour that Tyndareus buys into.
Look I know it’s myth rather than history but I enjoy fully buying in to the story. How two men wreak such havoc is fascinating. As always, Agamemnon is a brute but here the blame is spread a little more onto Menelaus. As he moved to live with Helen (so often a woman had to leave her home and family to live with a mostly unfamiliar man far away) it’s easy to imagine why she might find it attractive to leave Sparta and Menelaus (if not her daughter) with the beautiful and charming Paris; abduction or a giddy yearning for a different life?
I really enjoyed Clytemnestra and have havered over whether to give it four or five stars; if I could I think I’d go for four and a half. There’s some great dramatic tension, no easy task when most readers will know the major events of the story. The characters feel well-rounded rather than the caricatures they could so easily be. I liked the switch to epistolary form after the tragedy that so floors Clytemnestra. The portrayal of her relationship with Aegisthus is layered and nuanced: it makes sense.
In writing this kind of novel it must be difficult to resist too much foreshadowing. I think Costanza Casati has given us just enough here: the mentions of vengeance, the actions and personalities that will play out in the Trojan war. It’s easy to think of Clytemnestra only in terms of seeking revenge on Agamemnon for sacrificing Iphigenia, but she had plenty of reasons before that and other people on whom she could reasonably want to exact vengeance. Time and again she is let down, wronged, betrayed. If revenge is a dish best served cold, Clytemnestra’s patience surely makes hers the best of all.
It’s a mark of how entrenched in the Homeric stories is our literary tradition (and how many of this type of story I’ve read in recent years) that I could so easily imagine myself in Sparta with Clytemnestra and Helen, their beloved siblings, difficult mother Leda and monstrous father Tyndareus. A common version of the myth is that Helen was the result of Zeus (disguised as a swan) raping Leda. Here, the more tantalising story is that Leda is rumoured to have had an affair with a foreign man; a rumour that Tyndareus buys into.
Look I know it’s myth rather than history but I enjoy fully buying in to the story. How two men wreak such havoc is fascinating. As always, Agamemnon is a brute but here the blame is spread a little more onto Menelaus. As he moved to live with Helen (so often a woman had to leave her home and family to live with a mostly unfamiliar man far away) it’s easy to imagine why she might find it attractive to leave Sparta and Menelaus (if not her daughter) with the beautiful and charming Paris; abduction or a giddy yearning for a different life?
I really enjoyed Clytemnestra and have havered over whether to give it four or five stars; if I could I think I’d go for four and a half. There’s some great dramatic tension, no easy task when most readers will know the major events of the story. The characters feel well-rounded rather than the caricatures they could so easily be. I liked the switch to epistolary form after the tragedy that so floors Clytemnestra. The portrayal of her relationship with Aegisthus is layered and nuanced: it makes sense.
In writing this kind of novel it must be difficult to resist too much foreshadowing. I think Costanza Casati has given us just enough here: the mentions of vengeance, the actions and personalities that will play out in the Trojan war. It’s easy to think of Clytemnestra only in terms of seeking revenge on Agamemnon for sacrificing Iphigenia, but she had plenty of reasons before that and other people on whom she could reasonably want to exact vengeance. Time and again she is let down, wronged, betrayed. If revenge is a dish best served cold, Clytemnestra’s patience surely makes hers the best of all.
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