House of names : a novel
(Book)

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra: spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling, and her children ... In House of Names, Colm Tóibín brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myths' most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes' story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother's lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.

Since her husband King Agamemnon left ancient Mycenae to sail with his army for Troy, Clytemnestra rules along with her lover Aegisthus. Together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return. Clytemnestra reveals how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy. Agamemnon came back from war with a lover himself; now Clytemnestra will achieve vengeance. But her own fate lies in the hands of her son, Orestes, and her vengeful daughter Electra.