"The Silence of the Girls" by Pat Barker is a gripping retelling of Homer's "The Iliad" from the perspective of the women who lived in the shadow of the Trojan War. Barker's narrative is haunting and raw, offering a poignant exploration of the experiences of women in a world dominated by men. Through the eyes of Briseis, captured and enslaved by Achilles, we witness the brutality of war and the resilience of the human spirit. Barker's prose is both powerful and evocative, breathing new life into this ancient tale and giving voice to those who have long been silenced. A must-read for fans of historical fiction.

A really refreshing tale of the siege of Troy told from the viewpoint of the women in the story. Everyone knows what the men did and thought but the women were just bit parts in the tale. Here they are put centre stage and given a voice. Pat Barker brings the greek camp to vivid life with complex portraits of the characters. It is a magnificent book

Briseis home has been destroyed by the Greeks and she becomes Archillies prize. Her husband and brothers have all been murdered and her city set alight. She adjusts quickly to her new life and becomes friends with Patroclus and often drinks wine with him and Archillies. When the Greek leader Agamemnon demands her for himself after having to return his own prize to stop the plague and men dying, Archillies refuses to participate in the war any longer. The trojans start to overpower the Greeks and Agamemnon begs Archillies to return to the war and offers him Briseis and many treasures in return he still refuses until his best friend Patroclus is killed in battle.
I liked this book but found it hard going to read which is a downside for me but would recommend it to people who like these types of stories.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review

Belatedly read this as I’ve been learning about Greek myths, and I’m just sorry I waited so long. I loved it, though loved is perhaps the wrong word for a story so brutal and told with such fierce intensity.

I’d never heard of Briseis, and until recently only had a hazy grasp of many of the myths, but I found her story, the story of the women of Greece and Troy captivating.

I know some readers dislike the 21st century narrative style, but I thought it was incredibly effective, not just in conveying the brutality and cruelty of war, but in evoking the timeless nature of the myths.

Excellent read. Recommended for a lot of people to read. Slightly different to her usual books but still very good.

Barker gives us an expertly written look at the events of The Iliad from a female perspective. She evokes the setting beautifully, giving us an insight into the effect of war on women that is seldom seen when thinking or writing about this period. Briseis' voice is beautifully conveyed.

Barker is a master of story telling. Wether she is writing about world war 1 or ancient greek myths she grabs the reader and pulls you in. A really great re telling that focuses finally on the women

An incredibly moving, complex and immersive read, telling the women's side of the great stories of old. At times it was very challenging - the beginning was bleak and brutal and I almost put it down. But I'm glad I persevered as it was very worth the read.

We’re plunged straight into the action as we follow Queen Briseis through her palace as the marauding Greeks capture/burn and kill everyone they can find. Not for someone looking for a cosy read, I did enjoy the style and the voices Barker brings to life in much the same way as her WWI novels.

I would recommend a little wiki walk about the legend of Troy, Helen, Menelaus etc before reading this - my knowledge extends, shamefully, as far as the film of the same name where Brad Pitt plays Achilles and Eric Bana is Hector, and that was nigh on two decades ago. That must be a mistake on the internet, there’s no way it came out in 2004.
Without that background knowledge, the plot was not difficult to follow but I got a little lost with the names, the generals of Greece and Troy, why they were fighting in the first place etc.

Barker has also made a conscious decision to use modern language, British colloquialisms like ‘mate’ which some people might find jarring amongst the Patroclus and the locations,but I thought it worked well in pulling it out of the past and pointing out the parallels with the present.

There should be a trigger warning, and I will be covering some of that in this paragraph so skip over it if you’re not interested.
Briseis is recognised as a Queen and so is given to Achilles, the butcher, as they call him. She is expected to be of service to him, but is unsure what that means and how to keep him happy, aware of how precarious she is. He could kill her on a whim, or give her to the soldiers as a gift, to pass around like a cup of wine. We know this could happen because Briseis describes seeing horrific ordeals happening to other women - their clothes torn off, a line of men waiting while their boy children lie bleeding to death in the gutter beside them. This sense of foreboding and fear persists throughout, where no-one is safe.

Although this is mainly told from her perspective, the book has come under some criticism for giving Achilles a voice too, or at least making him something of a sympathetic character. Abandoned by his water god mother, ignored by his father and now he finds himself made for war. Exhausted and longing to go home, he cannot give up but he cannot seem to beat Hector. I thought it was interesting in providing this angle - that no-one in war is innocent or all evil, both sides have complaints to make and things to be ashamed of. It’s futile and brutal in the same way that any war is, and I feel that this point is well made by including some of the thoughts from the men. Added to that, that book is literally called ‘The Silence of the Girls’ - silenced because the men talk more, because they’re expected to stand there and look beautiful.

There is a sequel published recently, called “The Women of Troy” and a direct continuation. This is on my TBR as I’m interested to read the next part of the story. THat change in language from ‘girls’ to ‘women’ is very deliberate, I think, and we may hear more of the women and less of the men in this instalment. Perfect for a Christmas present for the historical fiction lover.

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin for the DRC!

I bloody loved this book! Telling the story of the end of the Trojan war from the point of view of Briseis, the narrative covered all of the key events we are used to seeing, but given new perspective. I thought Briseis' voice was fantastic - completely relatable and with a modern day parlance that didn't feel out of place. Pat Barker doesn't shy away from the horrors of war, but seeing the carnage from the female view point was truly excellent. I will be picking up Women of Troy immediately!
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Powerfully emotional and sets the mind spinning into the re told world of greek mythology. Beautifully written. Gorgeous, Showcases the women from silenced, erased and truncated by history. Makes you see the world through different eyes and I am a fan, Definitely one to recommend.

I am in love with this book. I've read Pat Barker's novels in the past and enjoyed them, but this was on an entirely different level for me. It's not often I finish a book and want to immediately start it again, but this was one of them. One of the best books I've read in years.

I love retellings. There's something particularly enjoyable for me in reading a familiar story from a different point of view, and I particularly enjoy the ones where traditionally male-centric stories are re-told from women's perspectives. Similarly to other great retellings, like The Penelopiad and Circe, The Silence of the Girls takes on Greek mythology, and in particular the Trojan war.

The book is told entirely through the point of view of Briseis, a queen forced to become a slave after the Greeks conquer her city and murder her husband. While in the original Briseis is little more than a plot device to explain Achilles's rage and refusal to fight, here she finally takes on a full life, and her story is told fully. All the characters, from the well-known Greeks heroes to the mostly-forgotten women who live with them, are beautifully portrayed and explored, and I really enjoyed seeing them interact in new ways. Briseis and the other women really take centre stage here, and they hold it perfectly, sharing their stories so that they will not be forgotten, and in so doing remembering all the women whose voices were taken away.

Although I mostly found this an interesting and gripping new take on an old classic, there were a few times where the pacing of the book fell a bit flat for me and it felt somewhat repetitive, especially in some parts describing camp life. I was also not too keen on how much focus was on Achilles at one point - we got enough of that elsewhere, and I just didn't feel the need for it here. This book also openly discusses violence of various kinds and rape, which might be triggering to some people.

Overall, The Silence of the Girls was an excellent retelling, giving us some insight in the life of the voiceless and forgotten. Ultimately, it is a tale of resilience and resistance, in whichever way that may be possible, and the real, human effects of war once the glamour and glory are removed.

It is always good to hear a different or modern take on ancient myths and legends and stories, particularly when the writer is someone of the calibre of Pat Barker.

Some have said that this take on Achilles’ story from The Iliad from a woman’s perspective is not feminist enough, and that it is still the story of Achilles and not Briseis, a woman caught up in the story and the narrator. That may be broadly true, but it is the subversion of that same story we are aware of that makes it all the more shocking and powerful when told by a woman, taken as a slave, a trophy of war, treated simply as a possession of the ‘Great Achilles’. If it were not Achilles story it would be simply an abstract view of a woman from the ‘ancient world’ – we need Briseis’ story to be part of the Achilles the ‘hero’ story. Without that as the locus it loses its power.

It is almost always the women in history who are silenced but in this partial retelling of The Iliad, we are forced to hear the silenced women and to rethink our understanding of this ancient tale and indeed the ways in which our interactions within our societies even in these liberal, educated times may not have changed as much as we would like to think.

This novel speaks on so many areas of life, not just on gender and sexuality but on our treatment and understanding of the old and the very young and even the unborn. And it is worth noting that 'Silence of the Girls' was written by an author around the age of 75 – worth noting not in a marvelling or patronizing perspective of ‘isn’t it good for someone of her age’ (it is a brilliant piece of writing no matter the author’s age) but that it was written by a woman with a genuine breadth of life experience to which she can refer. It is that understanding that is revealed in the wisdom, understanding and responses to the genuinely shocking experiences of Briseis, such a young main protagonist, and what makes this story much more real than the traditional telling of The Iliad. 'Silence of the Girls' is utterly believable and has so much to impart all readers, no matter their gender.

The silence of the girls was such an immersive, captivating book. From the first page, it grasbbed me and didn't let go until i had devoured it until the very end. It was a refreshing look into the subject matter being from the POV of a woman. It allowed for Barker to make some changes or omissions that we have never heard before as it wouldn't crop up in a male's view. I thouroghly enjoyed reading this, and although there were some difficult scenes and topics, they were well written and didn't take away from the main plot line any more than was necessary.

Another day, another retelling of the Trojan war. Reading this more or less concurrently with A Thousand Ships led to a certain amount of confusion over which author said which. Like Haynes, Barker seeks to lend a voice to the female experience of male-dominated narratives. The major difference is that while Haynes' novel features a chorus of women from both sides of the combat, Barker focuses in on just one, Briseis. Best known for being subject of a squabble between Achilles and Agamemnon, Briseis goes from queen to 'bed-girl' and domestic servant over a matter of pages, giving her the perfect vantage point to observe the conflict's final months. Interested more in what happened off the battlefield than on it, Barker's novel takes an unflinching look at the price of war.

Although I had not read any of Barker's other novels, I am aware that she is a veteran war-writer, with her Regeneration trilogy winning the Booker prize back in the mid 1990s. An early review of Barker's work noted that you go to her less for the language than for the hard truths about human nature. There are plenty of hard truths to be had in The Silence of the Girls. We see the fall of the city Lyrnessus almost in slow-motion. I am not sure if Barker quite managed to capture the inner life of a noblewoman from ancient times, with anachronisms such as references to 'half a crown' but I did find her description of the battle to be incredibly evocative. It's that sense of disconnect - this cannot be happening and yet it is. Briseis watches from the tower as her husband is killed and then they have only a few minutes before Nestor approaches and explains politely that they are all now the property of the Greeks.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the story - and I suspect what drew Barker to the story is the first place - is just how little has changed about the rules of warfare down the millennia. The brutal conditions, the rapes, the senselessness of the violence. But more than that. The male deafness to female pain is eerily similar. Patroclus' trophy woman Ismene helps organise his funeral games and is treated as almost his widow right up until the moment when she is handed off as a prize at the tournament's end. When Briseis says to the men that she will see to Priam since she knows him, her sister being his daughter-in-law, they all stare at her in surprise, having forgotten her past life. In The Iliad, Andromache begs her husband to forsake his honour and to stay safe with her and their child. If he dies and the city falls, he knows that she will have to become someone's concubine and their child will be slaughtered. That is exactly what happens but he ignores his wife's horrific, awful grief and pain in favour of displaying his own physical courage. Similarly, Priam cannot bear to see his son Paris lose face and so he will not return Helen.

I was reminded very vividly of The New Mrs Clifton, which also presents the unpleasant female perspective on World War II. Not only has the titular character endured repeated rapes during the fall of Berlin, but her new sister-in-law is the widow of a British officer. Julia goes from being the popular wife of the commander to an unpleasant reminder of his death and is hustled off the base shortly after her husband's death. I have read other similar accounts. The men fix their eyes on glory and honour and they avert their gaze from the women's wails. Silence of the Girls packs its biggest emotional punch from the meeting between Priam and Achilles. Barker directly quotes  The Iliad with Priam saying 'I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son'. Watching him is Briseis who counters silently, 'I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers'.

Priam's plea to Achilles for Hector's body is one of the iconic images of the Trojan war. Achilles' gracious response is another such. Reading versions of the story in my own childhood, I had thought it very touching. But as with so many other 'heartwarming' tales from wars, it tells a lie. Priam is not the devoted father he appears here. He nods vaguely as he recognises Briseis in her slave state and mumbles sympathetically that it is 'hard on the girls' when the cities fall. When Briseis asks for him to take her with him, he asks her what the point would be. She would have a few weeks of freedom and then would be back to slavery when Troy inevitably falls too. Barker is emphasising that Priam knows that he cannot win this war. If he had cared a single jot for any of his daughters, he would have thrown Paris and Helen out the front door. But it makes little difference to Priam. He is killed quickly. The girls live on and suffer.

I found The Silence of the Girls to be a brutal read and at times excessively so. It is less the actual rapes as Barker slides over details. Achilles is not as violent than Briseis feared, 'What can I say? He wasn’t cruel. I waited for it — expected it, even — but there was nothing like that, and at least it was soon over'. Agamemnon is worse but the moment of truest disgust comes when he is finished and then spits in her face. The unrelenting unpleasantness grated. I hit my personal pain threshold with Briseis' description of the evening when she sees that one of the vilest Greeks is wearing a tunic that she had made for her father which had had 'love in every stitch'. At this point it felt like the book had teetered a little too far into torture porn, with Barker spending too long dreaming up new and varied humiliations for her characters. The entire camp one big stinking latrine pit populated by malevolent Greeks with body odour issues.

Briseis felt quite blank as a protagonist and I struggled to connect with her. I can see that she is intended as the reader-surrogate but she just felt quite bland. I could imagine her in the inevitable adaptation played by a very beautiful actress taking long soulful gazes at the camera. There were certain aspects of her story that I really wondered at. In the opening pages when she is still queen, she exchanges uncomfortable glances with her slave-woman who is currently pregnant with Briseis' husband's child. Both women know that they will soon be in the same situation. Yet Briseis never engages with the fact that her husband has been raping this woman. She is quick to disdain the other women in the camp who have entered into proto-marriages with their captors but makes no effort to understand why these mental gymnastics might have taken place. Briseis always feels apart from her fellows. At times she even feels like a female character who is proudly 'Not Like Other Gurls' and goodness knows that there are enough of those out there.

Yet despite these quibbles, The Silence of the Girls was incredibly thought-provoking. For the first time, I felt I could picture the lives of the women in captivity. When there is nowhere to run to, their movements can be surprisingly uninhibited. When there is no alternative, they submit without murmur to the men who killed all of their loved ones. As a child, I was frustrated by the silence of the girls, these female characters who might as well have been statues for the amount of agency they had within their own narrative. Now I can see that they had voices but none of the storytellers - all of them male - ever paid them any heed. Even in recent adaptations such as the lacklustre movie Troy, Brad Pitt's Achilles was depicted as having a love story with Rose Byrne's Briseis. This double erasure of their experience only makes the pain of what they endured more difficult to bear.

As the ships set sail for Greece, Briseis helps with two burials. One is for Astyanax, toddler son of Hector whose head has been bashed in. That child's death has always haunted me and it has only gotten worse since I had a son myself. The other is Polyxena, sacrificed to be Achilles' bride in the afterlife. The women look at her slit throat which gapes like another mouth but the girl of course is silent. These two seem very apt symbols of who ends up paying the price for war in any era. The Silence of the Girls is a commentary on warfare, depicting a conflict devoid of heroes which echoes into our own time.

A brilliantly written retelling of Achilles and the Battle of Troy, told by Briseis, who was enslaved. Highly recommend.

I love Greek Mythology but this wasn't one of my favourite interpretations. There was a lot of focus on Achilles and Patroclus, which I think has been done to death and as much as the focus was initially on Briseis by the end it felt more about the latter two men.

Interesting story, didn't really know what to expect from this. Could have been a detailed list historically of the events which took place, but it is told solely from the viewpoint of one captured princess turned slave. Nothing of great note happens and it gently works through a fairly sort period of time, however it did keep my interest throughout.

A brilliant tale by this brilliant author. Have loved all her books and this is another classic. It’s so well written I set goosebumps on my arms at times.
5/5 on Amazon and goodreads.