“The houses were all filled with names,” she said. “All the names. This house was...”
She put her head down and did not say anything more.When I read (and loved) Colm Tóibín's The Testament of Mary, I had the advantage of a familiarity with the New Testament, and I was therefore able to recognise where Tóibín's account differed from the “official record” and appreciated the ensuing ironies. With House of Names, however, having no prior knowledge of the saga of Agamemnon (as detailed in Aeschylus' dramatic trilogy, The Oresteia), I could only read this book as what it appears to be: a straight retelling of an epic tale. Not being satisfied with that in the end, and having a husband who was a theatre major at school, I was able to find the first volume of Aeschylus (Agamemnon) on his bookshelf, and what I learned from reading it seems to be an important prologue: Because of the misdeeds of their ancestors, the gods had put a blood curse on the House of Atreus, and through the generations, the Fates guided members of this family to take up knives against each other. In this first play, when King Agamemnon is finally victorious in his decade long war against Troy, upon his return to Mycenae, he is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra (who has dreamed of vengeance ever since her husband sacrificed their eldest daughter to Artemis during the campaign). Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus, then assume the throne. From notes in the edition I read, I learned that the second play involves the return of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's son, Orestes, from where he had been hidden during the war, and at his sister Electra's urging, Orestes murders his mother and stepfather. The final play in the trilogy sees the Furies seeking vengeance against Orestes, but Artemis intervenes, convenes the first jury trial (acting as judge herself), and thereby both removes the curse from the House of Atreus and hands over the tools of justice to humanity. Ah, this knowledge makes all the difference. (Note: I read an ARC of this book and quotes may not be in their final form.)
I am praying to no gods. I am alone among those here because I do not pray and will not pray again. Instead, I will speak in ordinary whispers. I will speak in words that come from the world, and those words will be filled with regret for what has been lost. I will make sounds like prayers, but prayers that have no source and no destination, not even a human one, since my daughter is dead and cannot hear.House of Names opens in a confusing medias res: In a muddle of emotions and recollections, Clytemnestra alludes first to her murder of the returning Agamemnon – its planning and execution – and then drifts back to recalling how Agamemnon had lured their daughter, Iphigenia, to the battlefield with a promise of marriage to Achilles. Once there, Clytemnestra learns that their daughter is to be sacrificed – Agamemnon does appear sorry, but his hands are tied by the demands of the gods – and Clytemnestra herself has a crisis of faith: If the sacrifice of their daughter is what the gods demand, then the gods are wrong. (In the play, the sacrifice seems even more pointless since Artemis demanded it of Agamemnon in penance for killing a rabbit without her permission; a fact left out of the book.) When Agamemnon finally returns and Clytemnestra slits his throat (along with that of his war spoils/concubine, the wailing Cassandra), what is most shocking to her family and the elders is that she committed these acts without the command or permission of the gods.
After Clytemnestra's opening first-person account, there is a third-person section about Orestes; and as the safe haven of Aeschylus' account is reinterpreted here as a kidnapping gone awry that doesn't advance the plot beyond keeping the boy gone 'til he's grown, I'll skip ahead to Electra's section; again from the first-person POV:
My room is an outpost of the underworld. I live each day with my father and my sister. They are my companions. When I go to my father's grave, I breathe in the stillness in the place where his body lies. I hold my breath so that this new air fills my body and I release my breath slowly. My father comes toward me then from his place of darkness. I walk to the palace with his shadow close, hovering near me.Eventually, Orestes does return home, and when he learns that it was his mother who killed his father, it isn't hard for Electra to manipulate him into taking revenge. Unlike in the plays, however, Orestes doesn't kill Aegisthus, Artemis and Apollo don't make any physical appearances, and Orestes finds himself sidelined from power. So, what's the point?
I think that House of Names has much in common with The Testament of Mary, and especially as they both concentrate on the experience of the women who are underrepresented in ancient texts, and they both highlight the fact that once you remove the gods from your stories, epically heroic actions become messy and petty. The feminism of this book is underlined by the fact that the women's sections are written in the first person, while Orestes' are from a more diminishing third person POV. Further, in the play, Clytemnestra is twice dismissed as a mere woman (once when her signal system – the lighting of fires in hilltop relay between Troy and Mycenae to announce Agamemnon's victory – is deemed foolish by the elders, and again when she entreats her returning husband to walk a red carpet of tapestries, It is not a woman's part to love disputing), yet in the book, no one would ever dare question the Queen's authority to her face. And as for the gods – if Clytemnestra is right and prayers “have no destination”, then Agamemnon was a superstitious monster for sacrificing his own daughter, Clytemnestra is free to seek justice by her own hand, Orestes doesn't need to be prompted by Apollo to kill his mother (unlike the action of the second play), and naturally the events of the third play can't be included in the book because there are no Fates and Furies; no Artemis or Apollo; no actual blood curse upon the House of Atreus.
I'm sure I would have gotten more out of the book itself if I were better versed in the Classics, but I don't regret having being prompted to read the play and then research the story further. Because I read the book cold, I can say that my immediate reaction was that it was an interesting story, decently told, with some passages of truly lovely writing. But it wasn't until I had something to contrast the book with that I found any deeper meaning. The book on its own I would probably have awarded three stars, but with further study, it's more like four; this is a rounding up of the difference.
