Ellen Cutler

http://www.ellenbcutler.com

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Ellen is Currently Reading

Ellen Cutler is currently reading

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

by Olivia Laing (Goodreads Author)

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May 16, 2025 10:57AM

Ellen Cutler is currently reading

Spoon River Anthology (Penguin Classics)

by Edgar Lee Masters

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Jan 08, 2025 06:12PM

Ellen Cutler is currently reading

Clytemnestra

by Costanza Casati (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, fiction, folk-tales-and-lore, literature, women

Reading for the 2nd time

read in January 2025

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Ellen Cutler said: " Truly enjoying this novels inspired by the Greek myths, and specifically, the women assigned the parts of villains, seductresses, murderesses, and generally evil beings. Every time I finish one, I am reminded that history is written by the victors, a Truly enjoying this novels inspired by the Greek myths, and specifically, the women assigned the parts of villains, seductresses, murderesses, and generally evil beings. Every time I finish one, I am reminded that history is written by the victors, almost always men, and their men of letters, almost never women.

I remember Clytemnestra only faintly from reading "The Iliad" (and not very carefully) freshman year in high school, some 55 years ago. She is parked generally in the section of my mind that collects odd factoids and there she sits with her daughter Electra, eponym of "the Electra Complex," the counterpart to the Oedipal Complex. No details or real understanding, just the kind of thing one pulls out for the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle or a competitive game of Pub Trivia.

There is nothing I enjoy like a rehabilitated woman of evil, so I ploughed happily into "Clytemnestra." Overall, it's pretty good. Costanza Casati has a somewhat slow and repetitive writing style. Her word choices feel driven by her desire to use language that Homer or one of the playwrights whose work she plumbed. Constant descriptions of red hair (and other effects) as "bronze" become distractions. Too much focus on the sand underfoot does as well. Poor old Aegisthus, always surrounded by darkness, and his unblinking, impenetrable eyes, is a bit wooden and in some ways a toy boy to Clytemnestra's cougar. But not in an interesting way.

Clytemnestra's story is long and complicated, weaving together the royal cultures of Sparta and Mycenae and a gigantic cast of familiar characters. Her mother Leda was said to have been seduced by Zeus in the guise of a swan. Her sister, Helen, was "the face that launched a thousand ships." Her brothers, Castor and Polydeuces/Pollux have their own divine associations and rapine habits. Her cousin, Penelope, marries Odysseus, and separately and jointly are famed in myth. Her husband, whom she murders, is Agamemnon, brother of Menelaus, both Greek heroes of the Trojan War. Agamemnon also sacrifices their daughter, Iphigenia, on an altar at Aulis because some seer said it was necessary to get the winds to blow their fleet to Troy. And there are more.

Not all the story lines are equally well developed, but when Clytemnestra is persuaded to bring Iphigenia to Aulis, presumably to marry the Greek hero Achilles, despite his preference for male companionship and the presence of his lover, Patroclus, tension rises. It's like watching a filmed imagining of a story where you know it all ends badly. Like "Titanic." Very well done.

Maybe it was my inadequate reading, and the confusion of keeping all the storylines (most of them grisly) associated with the rulers of Mycenae straight, but I would have appreciated a tighter narrative from the return of Agamemnon to the end of the book. Just a quick hop. In fact, I was caught by surprise when the book ended because I was only at 85% or so of the text. I hadn't accounted for the pagination including a glossary of Greek terms, a set of questions for Book Groups, and an interview with the author. (But the end matter is actually worth a quick read.)

So I am on to my next bit of revisionist mythology. Don't know what it is, but looking forward to it. ...more "

Jan 23, 2025 03:22PM · see review

See all 5 books that Ellen is reading…