Klytaimnestra Who Stayed at Home

by Nancy Bogen

To read Klytaimnestra, Who Stayed at Home is to enter the Ancient Greek world inside out. On the surface, it offers a multidimensional view of the home front during the Trojan War, with Klytaimnestra, wife of Agamemnon, supreme commander of the Greek forces, as the centerpiece. On this level, one critic has said that author Nancy Bogen surpasses Virginia Woolf in her ability to penetrate and lay bare each character’s psyche and at the same time to hold the fabric of her narrative together.

On another level, Klytaimnestra, Who Stayed at Home attacks the Ancient Greek conception of the hero, and by extension our own Western one. Odysseus, who was upheld by Homer as the archetypal hero because of his craftiness in mind and body, is presented as evil through and through and the true author of the Trojan War. And there are many more levels yet to this novel, as another critic has pointed out.

Highly lyrical, imaginative, and a good all-around yarn — what more could a serious reader want in a challenging work of contemporary fiction.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1980

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was engaging and interesting to get to know her better. But I found the characters inadequately developed.