Book Review: Clytemnestra

Costanza Casati's debut novel is a powerful work which brings the ancient queen vibrantly, and violently, to life.

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There’s no shortage of retellings of classical myth these days, and while most are quite good, every so often one comes along that really knocks your socks off. Costanza Casati’s debut novel Clytemnestra is just such a novel, and if you’re a fan of mythic retellings that really make you feel as if you’re in the ancient world–in all of its brutal and beautiful strangeness–then I can’t recommend this book highly enough. It follows the title character from her childhood, through her first tragic marriage to Tantalus and on into her unpleasant life with Agamemnon and ends, of course, with her deadly alliance with Aegisthus and the murder of her husband. 

From the very first pages, it’s clear that this is going to be a mythic retelling to savor. Casati is one of those authors who is a true prose stylist. Like the other giants in the field–Mary Renault, Madeline Miller, etc.--she has the uncanny ability to capture the cadence and rhythm and flavor of ancient myth. Of particular note are her similes, which she uses with devastating effectiveness. You’d be forgiven for thinking that you were actually reading an ancient author, so skilled is Casati at drawing on the various aspects of life which shaped how the ancients understood the world around them and their place in it. 

Clytemnestra has the ill-fortune to be born into the royal house of Sparta. While the city as a whole is remarkably lenient in terms of the freedom it allows its women, there are only so many paths for those with royal blood. Though Clytemnestra finds brief happiness with the handsome foreign prince Tantalus, her duplicitous father promises her hand to the fierce and brutish Agamemnon, who murders her husband and takes her for his own. These early scenes are delivered with the sharp precision of a knife-thrust, and we feel with the young Spartan princess as her life is turned upside down and she is taken against her will.

However, Clytemnestra is no wilting violet, and she forges her own life in the palace of Mycenae, and she draws particularly close to her daughter Iphigenia. This, too, however, ends in bloody tragedy when her husband sacrifices his daughter so that he can get good winds to set sail for Troy. As the years go by and Agamemnon remains encamped before the walls of Troy, Clytemnestra’s desire for vengeance only grows sharper and more insatiable, until she has forged herself into a weapon of revenge. When, at long last, her husband returns and she brings his life and his reign crashing down around him, it’s hard not to feel the same savage sense of satisfaction as our heroine does. 

It would have been very easy for Casati to sanitize Clytemnestra, to turn her into someone who only reluctantly turns to violence to effect the justice she has so long been denied. In a brilliant move, however, she turns the ancient queen into someone who is truly terrifying, and she doesn’t shy away from the more sinister, and sometimes downright unpalatable, parts of Clytemnestra’s psyche. She’s not a villain, per se, but neither is she someone who draws the reader in with her sympathy. She is instead very much a product of her harsh Spartan environment, which has gradually crushed the sentimentality from her. Given the duplicity of her father and the degradation of her mother–whose lack of agency leads her to drink–it’s not surprising that she takes a rather jaundiced view of life. 

This isn’t to say that Clytemnestra’s life is all misery, however. She shares a strong bond with her sister, Helen, who comes in for her fair share of misfortune and oppression. Even here, though, a distance slowly takes shape, and Casati nicely captures the anguish of two sisters whose lives–both because of politics and because of their very different natures–begin to go on very different paths. Anyone who has felt themselves slowly drawing apart from the most important people in their lives will no doubt recognize this dynamic, and it’s yet another testament to Casati’s skill at making the myths of antiquity remarkably relevant to the present. 

That being said, Clytemnestra is most definitely not for the faint of heart. There are some brutal scenes here and Casati doesn’t shy away from showing us the blunt edge of violence, both sexual and otherwise. The moment when Iphigenia meets her fate at Aulis is particularly gut-wrenching, but this is in keeping with the dark origins of the myth. It’s worth noting, however, that she doesn’t do so simply for the shock value, but instead to help us understand what life was often like for the women of the ancient world, particularly those who, like Clytemenstra, found themselves caught up in the great political events of the age. It’s to Clytemenestra’s credit that, though she begins as a pawn in her father’s games, she slowly proves that she isn’t going to take anything lying down. Not even the gods–or their representatives, like the cadaverous priest Calchas–are going to dictate the terms of her life. 

Clytemnestra is the type of novel in which you can absolutely lose yourself. As you watch the title character’s life unspool before you, you also get the sense that you are right there with her on the sands of the training ground in Sparta, or stalking through the blood-soaked halls of the citadel at Mycenae. It’s not every author who has the skill to capture the essence of the myths of ancient Greece–particularly one that has been told and retold as many times as that of Clytemnestra and her doomed family–but we’re very fortunate that Casati seems to be one of those. In her capable hands this ancient queen becomes someone both of her own time and of ours and this, more than anything else, is testament to the enduring power of the ancient myths, which continue to trouble us and to fascinate us in equal measure.  

I can’t wait to see what Casati has in store for us next!