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Fiction

House of Names by Colm Tóibín

by •
August 2017, no. 393

House of Names by Colm Tóibín

Picador $29.99 hb, 262 pp, 9781760551421

Fiction

House of Names by Colm Tóibín

by •
August 2017, no. 393

House of Names is a grim book, as any retelling of Aeschylus’s Oresteia is bound to be. It is a tale to harrow up your soul, to make your two eyes start from their spheres – or at least, it is until ten pages before the end, when Elektra cracks the book’s first joke and the tone becomes a touch mellower.

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Robert Dessaix

Robert Dessaix is a broadcaster, essayist, and memoirist. His most recent books are His most recent book is The Time of Our Lives: Growing older well (2020) and The Pleasures of Leisure (2017).  He is also the author of several other books including the autobiography A Mother’s Disgrace (1994), the novels Night Letters (1996) and Corfu (2001), and the travel memoirs Twilight of Love (2004) and Arabesques (2008).

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