RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewPart of Toibin’s success comes down to the power of his writing: an almost unfaultable combination of artful restraint and wonderfully observed detail. It is this, for example, that transforms his account of the sacrifice of Iphigenia from what could all too easily have been a ghastly version of operatic bombast into a moving tragedy on a human scale ... Part of it is also to do with the way Toibin engages with the ancient texts that define the story. He is not afraid to deflate some of their grandstand moments.
David Vann
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe whole book is in fact full of body parts and appalling violence, so that by the end the murder of the children seems gentle by comparison (though she does drink blood directly from the throat of one). And the prose style too is part of the defamiliarizing process: short, rhythmic, flamboyantly 'primitive' sentences, regularly omitting the verb 'to be' ('Night prolonged, Hekate hearing' is typical). It is not hard to get the point. But in comparing the modern versions of ancient myth offered by [Colm] Toibin and Vann, it is also not hard to conclude that restraint is often more powerful than flamboyance.
James Stourton
MixedThe GuardianSome of the best chapters in James Stourton’s careful biography discuss the making of this series ... As Stourton shows, some of the criticisms do not stick. Although the programmes concentrated on western Europe, Clark was not blind (as he was charged) to other artistic traditions...But Stourton frankly concedes one glaring omission in Civilisation. This was a 'great man' approach in the most literal sense. Hardly any women got a look-in ... There is little room for independent women in Stourton’s version of Clark’s life. Jane wins his praise early on for her elegance and her dress sense; she was 'a natural and beautiful hostess.' When she doesn’t fit that type, she gets written up as the monstrous, unstable spouse of a long-suffering husband.
