House of Names

From the thrilling imagination of award-winning author Colm Tóibín, comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra — spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling — and her children.

"A creative reanimation of these indelible characters who are still breathing down our necks across the millennia... [Toibin] pumps blood even into the silent figures of Greek tragedy... Despite the passage of centuries, this is a disturbingly contemporary story of a powerful woman caught between the demands of her ambition and the constraints on her gender...Never before has Toibin demonstrated such range, not just in tone but in action. He creates the arresting, hushed scenes for which he's so well known just as effectively as he whips up murders that compete, pint for spilled pint, with those immortal Greek playwrights."--Ron Charles "The Washington Post "

"Although a reader may know what's coming, the novel's imaginative take on the twisted psychology behind the horrific acts is what keeps it compelling... The final chapters are among the most mysterious and beautiful Toibin has written; a high bar."--Claude Peck "The Minneapolis Star Tribune "

"Mr. Toibin is exemplary of modern methods, a careful, Jamesian portraitist of exquisite finesse and understatement... as finely written as any of his books."--Sam Sacks "The Wall Street Journal "

"Simply and inexorably, Toibin spins the deadly tale we remember so well from our schooldays...It is Toibin's unembellished prose that grips us, pulling us anew into an old story, one whose ending we know yet cannot put down. We are also struck by the emotional distance he gives his characters, one from the other, except in rare instances - a family dynamic bred of damage... riveting and relevant and a fine addition to the growing canon of works by Colm Toibin."--Karen Brady "The Buffalo News "

"The misadventures of Agamemnon and his family were repeatedly retold in Greek mythology...In his new novel, House of Names, Colm Toibin explores part of this story, from the murder of Iphigenia to the murder of Clytemnestra, making it strike a new chord, far more impressive than the pious respect or worthy aura of 'classicism' that often surrounds it. Part of Toibin's success comes down to the power of his writing: an almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully observed detail....[this] transforms his account of the sacrifice of Iphigenia from what could all too easily have been a ghastly version of operatic bombast into a moving tragedy on a human scale...he is also very good on exploiting the puzzling gaps in the ancient narrative, especially where Orestes is concerned...But Toibin has bigger themes in mind, too, particularly the cycle of violence that seems to trap the family of Agamemnon."--Mary Beard "The New York Times Book Review "

"House of Names works because of the empathy and depth Toibin brings to these suffering, tragically fallible characters, all destined to pass on "into the abiding shadows" -- yet vividly alive in this gripping novel."--Heller McAlpin "NPR.org "

"[A] psychologically probing and intimate retelling of the Greek tragedy...Toibin's prose is stark and mesmerizingly readable. It reveals the horrors but doesn't sensationalize them -- which makes them even more horrific, as he meticulously reproduces the inexorable and inevitabilities of Greek tragedy. The calm ruthlessness of the tale adds to its terrors...[a] magnificent novel."--Sam Coale "The Providence Journal "

"[An] extraordinary new novel... Drawing upon Greek tragedy as deftly as he borrowed the story of the Virgin mother in his 2013 Booker Prize finalist novel, The Testament of Mary, Toibin has found the gaps in the myth, reimagining all as a profoundly gripping and human tale... you can see at once the marvelous writer Toibin is, and how he works best under a set of self-imposed restrictions..."--John Freeman "The Boston Globe "

"Exquisite...[Toibin] makes modern psychological drama out of the Greek mythological cycles of violence that destroyed Clytemnestra and her family, wresting human motives out of stories that might otherwise feel alien to our culture."--Boris Kachka "New York Magazine "

"A devastatingly human story...savage, sordid and hauntingly believable."--Kate Clanchy "The Guardian "