House of Whispers, House of Murder 
 Francois Perrier: The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (detail) 
 The basic story, of course, is that of Aeschylus' Oresteia: a chain of killings, each in revenge for the other. King Agamemnon of Argos, the leader of the Greeks, prevented by contrary winds from setting sail for Troy. sacrifices his eldest daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the gods. Years pass before Agamemnon returns, only to be killed in revenge by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. Years pass again, during which Agamemnon's son Orestes, who had been kidnapped on the day of his father's murder, grows to manhood. Finally, Orestes returns and, encouraged by his surviving sister Electra, kills Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. For the crime of matricide, he in turn is pursued by the Furies. 
 Pierre-Narcisse Guerin: Murder of Agamemnon 
 Homer, Euripides, and Sophocles all tell parts of this story with some variations. I personally am most familiar with the opera by Richard Strauss based on the play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which focuses on Electra's vengeance and Orestes' return. Colm Toibin, telling it in his own way, acknowledges the classical sources, but says that much of his plot and many of his characters are solely the products of his imagination. After a brilliant retelling of the first two killings (those of Iphigenia and Agamemnon), he then diverges from the originals to look closely at Orestes during his years of exile. We see him first as a captive in a kind of prison-school, then watch him escape with two other boys called Lysander and Mitros, then see the three living as fugitives in the house of an old woman on a deserted sea coast. A parallel chapter focuses on Electra, growing up in a household ruled by fear and tyranny. In the last hundred pages, Orestes returns, and though he does indeed kill Clytemnestra, most of the other events follow a different path that is Toibin's own. 
 Greek relief: Orestes kills Clytemnestra 
 So why did Toibin undertake this? It doesn't seem to be a commission, like the Canongate Myth Series. One can only think that it speaks to several of the author's persistent themes, especially mothers and their sons in search of personal identity. These are found throughout his Wexford novels and stories. They also partially explain his interest in historical themes in his previous standalone novels, Henry James' emotional formation in The Master, and the epitome of all mother-and-son stories, Mary and Jesus in 
 The Testament of Mary 
 . And the first voice we hear is that of the mother, Clytemnestra. At first, it seems that she will be entirely sympathetic; her outrage at being tricked into bringing her daughter as the bride for Achilles only to see her slaughtered is a powerful spur, and Toibin gives her the same hard-edged treatment he uses for the Virgin Mary, and a similar scorn for the platitudes of religion: 
 I wish now to stand here and laugh. Hear me tittering and then howling with mirth at the idea that the gods allowed my husband to win his war, that they inspired every plan he worked out and every move he made, that they knew his cloudy moods in the morning and the strange and silly exhilaration he could exude at night, that they listened to his implorings and discussed them in their godly homes, that they watched the murder of my daughter with approval. 
 This is powerful stuff, and I feel that the first 65 pages, where Toibin stays closest to his sources, only retelling them from the viewpoint of this angry but realistic woman, are the best in the book--even as we become aware that Clytemnestra is acting for selfish motives also and is as much a tryant as her slain husband. 
 When Toibin leaves the mother to follow her son Orestes, the nature of the book changes entirely, losing its mythological resonance and becoming more like a boys' adventure story. There are still excellent descriptions and action scenes, but once the boys manage to escape and find refuge, most of the urgency disappears. Instead, Toibin develops--with great delicacy, I must say--a growing homoerotic relationship between Orestes and Lysander. So far as I can see, this Lysander is an invented character; Euripides gives Orestes a different companion, Pylades. As there is a strong tradition that the two were lovers, this is not something that Toibin is grafting on to the story. I found it moving, but not compelling. It also fits in with Toibin's picture of Orestes returning to Argos as a much more sensitive and confused character than the avenging hero of myth. 
 Hellenistic: Orestes and Pylades 
 In the end, it all comes down to Toibin's treatment of the final act of this drama. I'm used to the rapid denouement of the Strauss opera where the killing of both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus follows almost immediately upon the great recognition scene between Orestes and Electra, so had trouble with the more leisurely pace here. Orestes is back in the palace for some time before he takes his revenge, and when it comes it is almost perfunctory. His relationship with Electra is far from clear-cut, and indeed she is the least fully realized of the major characters. A lot of the last fifty pages is spent tying the loose ends of Toibin's invented plot concerning Lysander and his family. So far from being pursued by Furies, Orestes is oddly sidelined, so that the novel ends in a rather inconsequential dying fall. 
 On the other hand, what could the author do? The Oresteia is a work of absolutes: Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter; Clytemnestra had to take revenge; his two surviving children had to avenge their father. But the moral swtichbacks are too much for a modern author; I imagine that a lot of the invented plot had to do with making the killings justifiable. One also senses a personal truth behind this: the young man's confused feelings about leaving his family and striking off on his own, together with the isolation of one who finds he cannot easily fit into the stereotypes of others. I only wish Toibin has found a more compelling way of showing it. 3.5 stars, rounded up.