... vengeance works best when it's aided by patience. And patience is like a child: it must be nursed so it can grow day after day, feeding on sorrow, until it's as angry as a bull and as lethal as a poisoned fang. [loc. 2492]
A retelling of the story of Clytemnestra, the wife who murdered Agamemnon on his return from the Trojan war. Casati bases her novel on Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis as well as the better-known Oresteia by Aeschylus: I wasn't familiar with the story of Clytemnestra's first husband, Tantalus, or his murder (together with their infant daughter) by Agamemnon, but this tragedy adds weight to Clytemnestra's implacable hatred, and her desire for revenge.
There are no gods or goddesses here: only men and women raised in a Bronze Age society, with different city-states having different cultures. In Sparta, the girls as well as the boys are trained to be warriors, to fight and to withstand pain and to have agency. Matters in Mycenae are differently arranged: when Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus encounter Clytemnestra and her siblings, there's an element of culture shock on both sides.
After the slow start of Clytemnestra's youth and her relationships with her parents, with her siblings, with her friend Penelope and Penelope's suitor Odysseus, the pace picks up. Clytemnestra is more or less traded to Agamemnon by her father: she makes no secret of her hatred for her husband, especially after he tricks her into bringing their daughter Iphigenia to be sacrificed. When Agamemnon sails for Troy, Clytemnestra is left in Mycenae to rule, to rue, to take lovers and to contemplate her vengeance.
Initially the third-person, present-tense narrative voice didn't engage me, but I found Clytemnestra's love for her siblings (especially Helen) intriguing, and her rage and grief were vividly written. The only real issue I had was with the ending, which seemed improbably hopeful. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are alive; Agamemnon is dead; Orestes and Elektra seem to have handled their father's murder with remarkable poise ... Yet from the myths we know that very soon her darling son and daughter will commit matricide. And from Western culture we know that Clytemnestra will be hated for millennia. But as Clytemnestra tells us, queens are "either hated or forgotten. She already knows which option suits her best ..."
Fulfils the ‘Published in 2023’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK publication date is 02 MAR 2023.
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