I went into this story having never read either Homer's The Iliad or anything by Pat Barker. However, that didn't stop me from being instantly captivated by this retelling.

The Silence of the Girls is told from the perspective of former queen Briseis who is captured and descends to become Achilles' prize of war. In grand epics, women have no opinion, they have no power, they have no voice. However, Barker fills this vacuum and offers readers a new perspective of the story and its brutal heroes. Briseis becomes an unknowing catalyst for Troy's eventual downfall with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, and Barker succeeds in telling her side of the story. She writes of the sexual and psychological abuse which is so often normalised in male-dominant stories and by no means romanticises their suffering.

"She was like a windflower trembling on its slender stem, so fragile you feel it can’t possibly survive the blasts that shake it, though it survives them all."

The reason I gave this story 4 stars was down to the jarring shift of perspectives. After the first part, the story begins telling the overarching story of the heroes and the shift from first to the third perspective comes without warning.

Nonetheless, the intercut of Briseis' account with that of Achilles' is interesting. He's not only a brutal warrior but a complex and troubled man. It's as if a part of him has died as he experiences the overwhelming anguish at the death of Patroclus. Briseis' anger and grief, swallowed down and unvoiced, is therefore juxtaposed with Achilles' own violent outpouring, consumed by conflict.

Barker's comparisons don't stop here. We identify a contrast between the vulgar talk of male characters and the quieter conversations between women. She explores not only the brutal battlefield of war but the paralleling battlefield located in the hospital tents, sleeping quarters, spaces women inhabit.
She juxtaposes the lavish tapestries, grand feasts and gold plates with the overcrowded huts and rats, ultimately leading to the plague.

All of this captures the nature of the epic as well as the quiet moments of beauty, as she brings the Greek encampment to life. The story ends with a glimmer of hope, Briseis is a survivor. She stayed strong throughout her suffering rather than throwing herself off a cliff to save her virtue, as was the case for other women. This was a quick read for me, instantly gripped by the lyrical language. This is a song of grief, anger and survival. You don't need prior knowledge of Homer's epic before reading this stunning story and I recommend everyone gives this retelling a read.

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin UK for my advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a partial retelling of the Iliad. Part of the story is told by Briseis, a princess whose town fell to the Greeks. All the men were killed and the women taken as slaves.
Briseis was then given to Achilles as a war prize. It tells of what it feels like to lose one's home and family and then have to serve those who are responsible for this.
Interweaved with this is the story of Achilles told from a third-person perspective.
It is a well-written book which tells the story from the perspective of the women on the losing side..

I thought The Silence Of The Girls was quite outstanding. I wasn’t sure whether I would like it, but it turned out to be readable, insightful, humane and by the end was utterly spellbinding.

(If spoiler warnings are needed for a famous 2500-year-old story, be aware that I make reference below to some events in the book.)

This is the story of the end of the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis, a Trojan noblewoman captured in battle and given to Achilles as a prize of honour. Largely narrated by Briseis herself, this is a brilliant portrait of what it is to be captured and to become someone’s property; to be referred to as “it”, to be silent and perform domestic duties, to be paraded in front of the men as a prize and to be forced to have sex with the man who killed her brothers and destroyed her home. There is also an excellent picture of the reality of the fighting and of the Greek camp on the plains of Troy, and it is all done in a wonderfully human, readable voice so it never becomes turgid or worthy. As a tiny example, of Achilles’s legendary invulnerability, “Invulnerable to wounds? His whole body was a mass of scars. Believe me, I do know.”

Much of the book is, of course, the story of Achilles and it’s a wonderfully insightful study of a proud, emotionally illiterate warrior’s reaction to insult and then to grief. The almost adolescent sulking and its effect are evoked with real understanding, the death of Patroclus is superbly done and very moving, and the portrait of Achilles’s grief and rage quite enthralling. We get a chilling picture of what his subsequent “heroism” on the battlefield really means, and the visit of Priam to plead for Hector’s body was both deeply touching and utterly gripping with Briseis’s voice and perspective binding it all together.

I was hooked from quite early in the book and for the closing third I was completely enthralled.

I think that Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy is among the finest literary achievements of the last half century, so I don’t speak lightly when I say that The Silence Of The Girls is one of her very best. I very much hope that it will be a contender for major literary prizes and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via Netgalley.)

I wanted to love this but sadly I didn’t, I wanted more women. and less Achilles, I just expected more from Pat Barker retelling the Iliad from the women’s point of view. Why couldn’t there have been a chapter or two from inside Troy from Helen or Cassandra? But it was still mostly about Achilles and Patroclus, a story I feel we all know too well already.

Pat Barker brings the time of the Trojan wars to life in a beautifully written novel. Told from the viewpoints of Briseis (a princess captured by the Greeks and given to Achilles as a slave) and Achilles, the book tells the story of the conquest of Troy by the Greek armies.
It is a compelling read, which does not shy away from the gruesome details and brutality of warfare, yet manages to portray even the fiercest warriors as human.
A really good book - read it!

The Silence of the Girls is a fabulous book. History is traditionally written and told by the victors; this is a story told by the victims. During the nine year long Trojan war, Achilles and his Myrmidon warriors sack the city of Lyrnessus. All its' men die that day. Briseis, the King's young wife, is given as a prize to Achilles. This book is her story.
Briseis is treated with relative kindness by Achilles, who is painted as a brilliant fighter but a petulant child. Agamemnon is a brutal and petty man. The whole premise of the war can be reduced to bruised egos. Most if the women are not as ‘lucky' as Briseis. Agamemnon’s ‘prize' brings a curse upon the camp. A wedge is driven between him and Achilles that nearly loses them the war.
Achilles tells Briseis he wishes he had never met her. The only man to show Briseis any kindness is Patroclus. The genius of this story is in the telling. Briseis’s story is one that is never usually told. She knows her life has changed forever, as a result of being on the losing side. The main events of the war are heard after the fact, as if on a newsreel. All of this is taken out on the women. The men are only interested in how it affects them.
The story is so easy to read, unlike The Iliad that is based on. Pat Barker's inclusion of some modern idioms makes this book accessible to a much wider audience. It would make an excellent introduction to anyone interested in the Classics.

The female Troy... readable literary version for a MeToo world.

There have been many versions/rewrites of classic stories over the years, the Penelopiad and The Song of Achilles just two of this one particular epic. Never will a female account feel more relevant.

In an account of armies of men fighting over a woman, "a girl really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war," with female prisoners of war taken and 'distributed' among the victors, we watch the deeds of Achilles and Patroclus, Agamemnon and Hector through the eyes of a Queen of a sacked city, taken into slavery and presented to Achilles as his prize.

Briseis shows us the side of ancient history we have not been given insight into - the women did not write chronicles, did not figure in important activities, have never been given a voice in history.

Having read The Iliad, as well as the versions above, I found this the most readable of the lot. It doesn't sugarcoat the more unpleasant aspects of being taken as a prisoner of war - the subjugation, rape, starvation, violence against the women, all whilst grieving for murdered loved ones. Barker also doesn't place any of the traditional heroes on a pedestal - Achilles has more than the one reputed weakness, and we see the men in all their sweaty, realistic glory.
"They're the warriors, with their helmets and armour, their swords and spears, and they don't seem to see our battles - of they prefer not to."

Briseis talks to us about her world, changed from palace to kept bed-girl, a trophy who must "spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers." It's horrific when you see it in this light. The story of Troy has never included these details.

We still get to see the story of Troy that we know, that of Hector, of Achilles the hero, of his best friend and confidante Patroclus, but without the rose tint. War is brutal, the men controlling it brutal in the heat of it.

I enjoyed the feel of time and place that Barker presented, and also the low-lying eroticism in Achilles' scenes with both Briseis and Patroclus, with relationships developing slowly through the book. And Briseis is a fighter, an observer, a survivor. We are allowed through her to see the other ignored, unexceptional females in the Greek camp and understand through the snippets of camp life we see know what life was like for the half of the population seen as little more than material goods.

For anyway who knows the story, the ending won't be much of a surprise, but the way Barker writes the segment was impressive, giving the 'bigger' story very little page space and detail, after all "his story... ends at his grave" and for those not there to witness it, what can be said? It was rather refreshing not to have a big battle scene, though I did wonder about the lack of mention of the Trojan Horse, especially as one scene mentions a toy that I thought might signify a plan to come - is the Horse a fabrication then of how the Trojan War ended?

An excellent insight into women's history, the history that was never recorded. Famous events as those watching from the sidelines saw them, and the background stories they might have lived and fought themselves.

My first Pat Barker, and not my last.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy.

An enjoyable book about the time of Achilles and Aggamemnon at the time of the Trojan war, but told mainly from the point of a captured queen who becomes a slave/ concubine to Achilles. An interesting perspective on a long and bloody war, which cost Achilles his life.

I was sent a copy of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker to read and review by NetGalley.
This was my first foray into the writing of Pat Barker. I really liked her mature style of writing and it was great to read a story mainly told from a woman’s point of view. The relationships between the characters were well drawn and quite believable and I was able to visualise the locations and feel the emotions of the ‘players’, with some passages being quite extraordinary. Though I was engrossed in the story and wanted to keep reading there is something that is holding me back from giving it the full 5 stars – if I was able to give 4½ I would do so. I can’t quite put my finger on why this is, but I would still recommend this novel as a really good read!

A spell-binding account of the events leading to the Battle of Troy. This could have been just another retelling of the heroes' actions as they unfolded but Barker has chosen to tell this from the viewpoint of Achilles' concubine, making it more personal and humbler.
Barker's blunt descriptions convey very successfully the girl's raw feelings and emotions, painting for the reader a picture of the frustrations of war and its knock-on effects. However, whilst I assume Barker intends for us to experience the feminist angle, I felt she over-stresses this at times - the way she tells her story drives home the message successfully enough.

A definite recommendation for greek mythology fans and historical fiction readers alike. An account to make us look more closely at the 'heroes' of that time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin Random House UK) for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

A feminist retelling of the Iliad through the voice of Briseis who had been in a queen in her own rite but witnessed the slaying of her husband and family. She was shipped off and was chosen by Achilles to be his bed mate or concubine and slave. There are no holds barred in describing how the women were treated or enslaved in what is termed as a “rape camp”. The horrors of war, looting, drunken revelry and a plague of rats are vividly portrayed. I’m not sure if the use of modern slang terms and the odd anachronism add or detract from the telling.
Barker presents a strong and vivid alternative viewpoint on a traditional tale where the Gods are supreme and the only noted women were goddesses. Here the real women shine through.

Loved this. Pat Barker is back! Refreshing perspective for a Greek myth, and not dry at all - a page turner.

I went into this book intrigued to find out how Pat Barker dealt with this fresh retelling of The Iliad. I definitely wasn’t disappointed, the story held my attention throughout and I did enjoy reading the story from Briseis’s point of view.

The story shows how these great wars which are normally told from the man’s point of view are seen so differently from the woman’s. Briseis, a queen of a neighbouring kingdom to Troy, is given to Achilles as his prize. She tells of her fear and anger, of the waste of lives and the way the women who become slaves and prizes cope with their new situation. As the book progresses Achilles also has a voice, and I loved seeing his character change as the war progressed. The brutality of war is so well written, as in Pat Barker’s other books; there is no glossing over what happens.

I did find it a little slow to get into but by the end, I was totally engrossed. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this extremely well written story.

Pat Barker takes us to the end days of the Trojan war, with a re-telling from the point of view of the women there. This is the story of Briseis, and through her, all the women caught up in wars - women with limited power, women with no control over their fates.

Barker tells a story of complex relationships. Briseis is pragmatic, angry but accepting. She goes from being a princess to being a slave to the greatest warrior of them all.. The social hierarchy is overturned, for all the women involved.

The heroes in this book are real people. There's an air of the WWI officer's mess in places - Achilles as the doomed fighter pilot? - there are negotiations and arguments. The pressure of the endless war, the endless siege - which keeps the besieging as imprisoned as the besieged- leads to personal feuds getting way out of control. This doesn't feel anachronistic at all - for me, it showed the universal nature of war. The hospital tent is how I imagine any hospital tent could be - pre-antibiotics, at any rate - conjuring up Vera Brittain and Hawkeye Pierce would both have felt at home there.

Through it all, the women watch, hang on in there, tolerate, survive. They talk among themselves, they share secrets, they develop complex relationships with their captors. They have children. They pass on their own songs and stories to their foreign offspring.

I read this book in an olive grove in Croatia, reminded that there was a war there not so very long ago, when rape was deliberately used as a weapon. Maybe myths survive because they are universal?

I thought I knew my Greek myths pretty well, and it was shaming to think that I knew this story, but had never really thought about it from a female perspective. This fits well in the tradition of re-tellings from a different perspective - and Barker brings her knowledge of conditions in WWI to bear here extremely successfully. I'm so glad I read this book.

This was a decent retelling of The Iliad from a different perspective and for a modern audience. I suppose that my issue with it lay mostly in the attempt at contemporary speech. I almost dreaded conversation between characters because the dialogue seemed so very out of place in what is still a very traditional tale. What I did enjoy were the more reflective moments and relationships between characters, both explained and alluded to. There were also beautiful instances of poetry and prose that for me were a delight, describing Achilles mostly both in battle and his more private moments. Briseis is also a sympathetic character, both in her resignation to her fate as a woman in wartime but occasional flares of defiance and strength. While I would have loved to see more representation of the Greek gods and goddesses I still found myself entertained by this book and found the pacing interesting enough that I finished it very quickly.

Here's the thing, I love Greek mythology, but in an abstract sort of way: I tried to read some of the myths when I was a child but they were a bit too dry, and I've been part way through The Illiad all summer. But retellings, ah, they're a different matter!

I LOVE this book. Giving voice to the voiceless female slaves of The Illiad was always going to be my jam, and Pat Barker does it exceptionally well. You might be able to gloss over the realities of life for the captured women in the original by Homer, but here it's laid out for you with brutal clarity.

First they witness the slaughter of their menfolk, then the slaves and lower class women are raped by the invading soldiers, then the higher class women (and any who survived the initial onslaught) are taken as slaves. Some of the women are given as 'prizes' to high ranking officers, and some of those will be bed slaves, which is exactly what it sounds like.

This is how Briseis, a former queen, ends up in the household of Achilles and Patroclus, and this is her story - from her capture just before Achilles and Agamemnon have their falling out, to the fall of Troy. As a narrator she is by turns angry, sorrowful, stoic, and wry, but her story is gripping and I raced through it. This book was beautifully written, and the story was everything I wanted Circe to be. I'm so glad I've read it.

I should declare a growing obsession with variants and offshoots of the Iliad and Odyssey. I’ve had a copy of each on my shelf for years now, but apart from the odd glance, that’s largely where they have remained, spines unbroken and pages pristine. A few years back, I studied a little of the Iliad as part of an OU module. Of course I have seen Troy, and have listened to radio adaptations of Electra (further proof of Kristin Scott-Thomas’ genius) and The Oresteia. A subscription to Audiobooks means I have now listened to the Iliad and Odyssey in their entirety, almost 30 hours all told (but in the company of the dulcet tones of Anton Lesser, time passes swiftly). That has really helped me put my ducks in a row, to determine which parts of the mythology come direct from Homer and which from elsewhere. I even managed to put Odysseus’ travels home from Troy into chronological order.
I read Madeleine Miller’s Song of Achilles a couple of years ago on a friend’s recommendation, and really enjoyed it. I’m eagerly anticipating her Circe. I’ve recently listened to Colm Tóibín’s House of Names, expertly told by three actors in the parts of Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra. It worked really well, emphasising the different narrators’ voices used in the book.
I’ve long been fascinated by adaptations of books. Far from the view of some who say that a certain film or television version has ‘ruined’ the book (I’ve never understood that; the original remains unsullied, the new work just adds to the canon), I enjoy observing the differences and similarities between source material and adaptation, and between different adaptations. Was a particular change made purely for the medium, or was it an artistic choice? It’s not always a case of a screenwriter riding roughshod over the author’s work: I’ve just watched Jaws after listening to it on Book at Bedtime. There were loads of changes but the book’s author Peter Benchley cowrote the screenplay. Was he bound by studio or agent demands – was killing off Richard Dreyfus’ character a step too far? Did he decide to drop some storylines for simplicity (Mrs Brody’s affair with Hooper, and the antagonism between Chief Brody and Hooper) and make other changes to fit the medium (seeing as little as possible of the fish)? Or did he work in plot points that he had pondered when writing the book? How does the choice of an actor in a particular role change the character or the dynamic of the story? It’s the same interest I find in historical fiction. Where has the author stuck rigidly to known facts and speculated around them, and where has a deliberate deviation from history been made?
I read Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy a long time ago but I remember how much I thought of it; more recently I have seen the film and listened to the Radio 4 play. So the combination of an author I admire and a subject I fangirl over means I have been looking forward to The Silence of the Girls for a while now. You can imagine my delight at having the opportunity to read it ahead of publication. Barker does not hang about. In the first few pages, we are plunged into a city under siege: the Greeks are approaching the gates of Lyrnessus. By the end of the first chapter, we have a good idea of what Briseis has already had to endure in this place.
Briseis knows what is happening to her is awful, will be awful perhaps for the rest of her life. But she bears it with steeliness, deciding that she will not, cannot take her own life. The battle rages on but is kept offstage for most of the book. Instead we are in the Greek camp, among the women, and see their relationships with each other, and their different responses to the situation into which they have been forced.
Each of the principal characters is recognizable from what has gone before, but they have been given other traits, too: Achilles is a little boy desperately missing his mother as well as a hotheaded warrior; Patroclus reveals that he was calmed by Achilles, not just the other way around; Helen is a skilled weaver; Priam is fond of children.
I was completely drawn into Briseis’ world. I was rooting for her and for the other women in the Greek camp. That I read this over just two evenings tells you all you need to know. I urge you to read it. Soon.

"Silence becomes a woman."

It's wonderful when you can genuinely say in a review that it was a privilege to have been given the opportunity to read a book.

Having not read any of Pat Barker's previous work, I was not sure what to expect. I had not expected to be blown away by an absolute tour de force of a novel: well-written in its direct simplicity and yet, at the same time poetic and deeply moving. Trauma is captured so brutally on the page here. Yes, this is a story of Briseis, lover of Achilles (for it is HIS story, as we are reminded) but this is no love story. The way Barker writes about loss and grief cuts to the quick.

There are no punches pulled - the description of the plague of rats in the camp had my face absolutely contorted, as did the deaths of men and the rape of women. All such descriptions are plentiful.

Briseis is outwardly subservient and inwardly a modern feminist and it is this push/pull that really drives the novel. Given where we are at with a number of issues regarding women's rights, this is an important book - an allegory for modern readers.

If this work doesn't win literary awards, it will be an absolute travesty.

Highly recommended.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Books UK, Hamish Hamilton and Pat Barker for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written and the descriptions bring the scenes to life. The facts in the story match with things that I have read previously. I would have given it 5 stars but for a part in the middle where I got a bit bogged down. Felt that the horror and terror of the battle and the despair of the slaves was made very clear.
The story is written from a different perspective. Rather than being about Helen of Troy, or one of the other main characters, it is written from the point. of view of a princess captured and kept as a slave which added to the interest for me.
I thoroughly recommend it

In The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker sets out to give voice to the women ‘silenced’ in previous versions of the story of the Trojan War. Unfortunately, I’m not sure she entirely succeeds. It all starts promisingly as the reader experiences the fall of Lyrnessus to the Greek army, commanded by Agamemnon, through the eyes of Briseis, wife of King Mynes. The horror of the battle, the dreadful consequences of defeat for the female inhabitants of the city in particular and the aftermath of the battle are evocatively described.

After the fall of the city, Briseis and noble women like her are ‘awarded’ to leading figures in the Greek army in the manner of battle honours or prizes of war. Because of her status, youth and beauty, Briseis is allocated to the legendary warrior, Achilles, becoming his slave and, effectively, his possession. Briseis wryly notes that in some cases individual women’s lives are changed for the better following their capture if, that is, they possess youth, beauty and fertility. ‘One girl, who’d been a slave in Lyrnessus – and a kitchen slave at that, the lowest of the low – was now the concubine of a great lord, while her mistress, a plain, slack-bellied woman near the end of her childbearing years, had to scratch and scrape for food around the fires.’

Surprised and unaccustomed to being on public view and unveiled when serving at Achilles’ table, Briseis eventually realises why he is happy for her to be seen by his comrades. ‘Nobody wins a trophy and hides it at the back of a cupboard. You want it where it can be seen, so that other men will envy you.’ The use of the word ‘it’ is relevant as, throughout the book, the author sheds light on the way the women are treated as objects.

For example, when Agamemnon later demands Briseis be handed over to him, Achilles’ anger is at being deprived of what he believes is rightfully his. ‘She’s his prize, that’s all, his prize of honour, no more, no less. It’s nothing to do with the actual girl.’ His response to this perceived dishonour will have far-reaching and tragic consequences. Later Briseis observes, ‘Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men’. For example, messages that demonstrate their status or their ability to wield power over others.

In parts two and three of the book, however, Briseis’ first hand narrative is interspersed with sections from the point of view of Achilles. Given his pivotal role in subsequent events and his strange heritage (his father, Peleus, is a mortal but his mother is a sea goddess), I found the power of his unfolding story rather took over the book, especially when it comes to the intense relationship between Achilles and his friend, Patroclus. Effectively, I felt Briseis was being silenced again. This was underlined for me when Briseis notes, ‘Once, not so long ago, I tried to walk out of Achilles’ story – and failed. Now, my own story can begin.’ These are the last lines of the book.

The book does assume the reader has some prior knowledge of the story of The Trojan War and its key characters. I had a little but not enough to recognise all the characters, their relationships or their role in the story. I think a dramatis personae would be a really helpful addition to the book. I wanted to love The Silence of the Girls and feel thrilled from beginning to end at witnessing the story of the clever, resourceful and resilient Briseis through her eyes and those of other women. Instead I found that, although I could admire the skilful writing, I felt slightly disappointed at the end, that my high expectations had not been met.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Hamish Hamilton, and NetGalley, in return for an honest and unbiased review. (3.5 stars)