It took me a while to get into this book. Not because it wasn't great, but because it was so very powerful and painful to read in places. Pat Barker retelling of Iliad turned it into a somehow universal story about women's voices being silenced and omitted to advance tales of men. Briseis, the main heroine of the story, Achilles' slave and prize, becomes an embodiment of women's fate - their lives do not matter in wars of men, their bodies cease to be theirs once they find themselves on the side of losers, instead they become dispensable commodities. This is not a pretty story we know as told by Homer, there's no honour and valour in it, or at least, not much. Instead, there's death, gruesome and painful, there's pain and loss suffered in silence, there is precious little happiness. There's a date of thousands of women raped, abused and sold - just like in any other war they are the ones that suffer and endure. But for once, they are given a voice. In this brutal and gory book, women are finally given the precedence over men, we learn their stories and fates, we learn their names.

What an incredible book. This is a writer at the absolute peak of her storytelling powers. We meet Briseis, Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, and Patroclus. But fundamentally this is the story of Briseis and the other women who are the collateral damage of the Trojan wars and is a female retelling of the Iliad. It is hard to describe the story as it is so well known and yet this is a totally different viewpoint. At times beautiful and poetic, the next minute it is brutal and heartbreaking. The story needs to be told as we have romanticised what it means to be "given" as a trophy of war and what that actually means to the women - and children - affected. This should be read by anyone interested in the time period, in the way women are excised from history and in the way death and war change people.

Heartbreaking, beautiful, incredible. Read it.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return fro an honest review.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

An interesting, but raw and brutal, perspective of the Achilles/Agamemnon conflict from the Iliad tale of Greek mythology told from the female perspective of the woman unwittingly and unwillingly involved in the quarrel, Briseis.

Both Agamemnon and Achilles are awarded a woman as a trophy of war with Troy, but when Agamemnon is forced to release his captive, Chryseis, he decides to pull rank and take Achilles’ captive, Briseis. Offended by this, Achilles refuses to fight for Agamemnon, a decision that leads to much bloodshed.

I don’t know much about the Iliad, nor about the tales of Greek mythology, but I do know they are takes of male derring-do and, I always assumed, of their women folk left at home happily wandering around in diaphanous gowns in the Greek sunshine. Pat Barker’s book shines a light on the much more likely scenario, when being a woman, war meant rape, being passed around as a trophy, abandonment, selling into slavery, squalor and starvation. Basically being completely powerless and inconsequential,

At times I did feel the story dragged and sometimes Pat Barker’s use of the modern idiom seemed at odds with ancient times, but on the whole I enjoyed it for the lesson it gave. Perhaps a section referencing the Greek characters would have benefited me and readers like me who come to this book with little prior knowledge, but it provided an unflinching account of women and the total expectation of them being silent non-personas in a tough, male misogynistic world.

What a beautiful book. I've read all of Pat Barker's previous work and this is an exception in that it's a departure from her usual themes, but no exception in that it is as beautifully imagined and described as all her writing. I studied the Iliad at school, and despite the passing of so much time, was able to immediately relate to the storyline and the setting. Authentic, compelling, an absolutely unputdownable version of events, with a very interesting use of magic realism, reflecting the mythology of the times. Thank you for the review copy.

"'Silence becomes a woman.' Every woman I’ve ever known was brought up on that saying."

It might be fair to say that myth is having a small female resurgence at the moment; what with Circe by Madeline Miller and now The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, it is time to take a different look at the (very male-skewed) tellings of mythology.

The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer's The Iliad that brings in the stories of the women and girls from the Trojan War. Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes - the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead - all of them erased by history.

Told mostly in 1st person by Briseis, with the occasional 3rd person chapters from the PoV of Achilles, I found myself curious that the character I was most interested in and found to be the most well-rounded was actually Achilles. However this book is not only about Briseis. It's about war: a brutal war, creating a brutal and much needed historical book.

Recommended.

Unusual retelling of the Trojan War seen through the eyes of a Trojan Queen who has been taken captive after the sack of her city. She has been awarded to the warrior Achilles as a prize and is more or less a sex slave. The battles outide the gates of Troy are seen through her eyes and the unspeakable cruelty of the war described. The parallels between the behaviour of the Greeks and that of modern day Isis fighters are clear. To me it was more of an anti-war book than a femisnist rant about how awful men are, though I am sure some readers will have a view on that. As well written as you would expect from a writer of Pat Barker's calibre.

I do not normally read these types of books but I am glad I did give this book a try. The story is in encapsulating and the characters leap from the page like they are alive. A superb read that I would recommend to anyone who does not think this genre is for them

I lve retellings of the Greek myths/legends/epics and this year has seen a bumper crop of them, I was worried this would be a disappointment after Circe earlier in the year but it wasn't - it was a pure delete get and shpuld be read alongside Miller's Song of Achilles .
As good as Barker's WW1 novels easily.

This one stayed with me for a long time after I finished reading it- which I did in one sitting.

Park Barker is renowned for her depictions of trauma and recovery, and The Silence of the Girls copper-fastens her expertise with resounding clarity.

The Silence of the Girls is the retelling of the fall of Troy through the eyes of Briseis, the woman at the heart of the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon that resulted in Achilles withdrawing his services from the Trojan War for a time. Despite the fact that Briseis clearly plays so central a role in Achilles' worldview, little time is spared for her in The Iliad and Barker has deliberately focused the tale on the experiences of women- from sexual assault to the loss of independence, the cruelty of war and the brutality visited upon women and children at the hands of men.

No prior knowledge of The Iliad is required to comprehend the story, but I think that knowing the story certainly helped me to see with abject clarity what Barker was trying to achieve here. She presents the story with a rawness that it sometimes stomach-turning, and refuses to accept any glamorisation of war and the military. Her version of the fall of Troy is far from a mythical delight; it's sore and cruel and dark as hell.

The thing that struck me most however, comes toward the end of Barker's re-telling, when Priam kisses Achilles' hand despite Achilles having killed his son. The moment is famous in literary history- but Briseis quickly puts paid to it with her internal bitterness noting that women lose so much in war, yet rarely have the space to grieve as Priam does.

Not for the fain of heart, but hit me as hard as the moment I first finished The Handmaid's Tale.

In Ancient Greece women are either wives, slaves or whores. After nine years fighting the Trojans the armies of Agamemnon sack a small city. slaughtering all the men they divide up the women as chattels. For Briseis, wife of the King, nothing can be as bad as watching Achilles slaughter her husband, father and brothers but she is his prize. Enslaved to a man she hates, Briseis sees the Greek camp as a prison and the Greeks as her enemies but Achilles is a complex man and Briseis may be more fortunate than many others she knows.

Having read and loved Emily Hauser's 'For The Most Beautiful' I was interested to read Barker's take on the story of Briseis. barker is an accomplished writer, her 'Regeneration' trilogy is a fond reading highlights of years past so the combining of Greek myth and outstanding prose should have been a winner. In fact is was more than that. As with all the ancient Greek tales the heroism is to the fore but linking that to the lives of everyday people is not always so obvious. Here the heroes of myth are shown as men with feet of clay and the woman may be victims but they have voices.

I read an ARC received from Hamish Hamilton via Netgalley.

“‘Silence becomes a woman.’ Every woman I’ve ever known was brought up on that saying.”

So… I’m going to find it extraordinarily difficult not to freak out whilst writing this review. This book is JUST SO GOOD that it’s going to be impossible not to throw in some caps locked sentences.

#sorrynotsorry

Silence of the Girls does not have the romanticism that Madeline Miller’s rendition of Achilles does. And that is what makes this book so great.

It doesn’t glorify a man who loved war and brutality; nor does it exalt in the idea of courage and fame. We see the story of Achilles for what it really is…

Brutality, death, and survival.

“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles… How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’.”

This is a story that so many women have faced over the centuries – and a story that has rarely ever been told.

This isn’t a happy tale. There is rape, suicide, graphic violence, and death. Barker’s way of dealing with these acts, however, is probably the best I’ve seen in a long while. The book can be brutal but, it’s treated as a fact, rather than a plot device. She neither skirts around the issue nor uses it as a tool to shock. It is an outcome of war. No more. No less.

“We’re going to survive–our songs, our stories. They’ll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Troy is dead, their sons will remember the songs their Trojan mothers sang to them. We’ll be in their dreams–and in their worst nightmares too.”

Barker re-weaves a classic where women are present, where they are not weak – she depicts women as living, breathing humans with opinions and emotions.

What I love about Silence of the Girls is that it doesn’t try to be a feminist rewrite, but becomes all the better for it. Briseis isn’t a warrior queen fighting for her freedom. She is a woman of her time; she knows the rules by which she is required to live, and she does not fight them. But she is still a person and, no matter what happens to her, she does not stop having her own views.

“What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.”

If you like Madeline Miller…

If you’re a feminist…

If you enjoy reading about people who are often forgotten in history…

YOU. WILL. LOVE. THIS.

Sophie also picked up The Silence of The Girls by Pat Barker because the blurb intrigued her enough to overlook that this book is very far from her usual reading style. It is, in some respects, a retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of a minor character – Briseis. Briseis was the queen of the Trojan city of Lyrnessus until the city was sacked during the final months of the epic Trojan war when she was taken as a slave and given to Achilles as a prize. In The Silence of The Girls, we witness the final months of the war from her point of view as she is forced to be the bed-girl (the nicest term used for her position) of the man who brutally murdered her father, brothers, and husband while he spends his days fighting to destroy what remains of her country.

This is not a book filled with easy subject matter. The descriptions of warfare are akin to what you see on Game of Thrones with no tiptoeing around the atrocities of the battlefield and the aftermath of the fighting, and the women’s discussions are stark and equally brutal as they compare notes on the acts their new masters force them to perform. That being said, Sophie found the book a surprisingly easy read thanks to its beautiful prose which flowed smoothly and thoughtfully throughout its pages.

The Silence of The Girls is a book that gives a voice to the female characters whose lives became mere commodities for men in the original, well-known telling of this story. It is a book that forces you to consider what you think you know well from an entirely new angle and considering our society still has a habit of silencing women’s voices, the point it tries to make in doing this is equally as important today as it was in the time of the Ancient Greeks.

Historical settings and stories of war are not something that have ever really interested me but I have always had a fascination with the Greek myths and the Trojan war in particular. I've probably been a little guilty of romantacising it and if I did I think it's safe to say The Silence of the Girls very quickly dispelled these notions of noble heroes and battles fought in the name of love. The picture Barker paints is dirty, degrading and it has to be said depressing. The "heroes" Achilles, Agamemnon, Paris and even Odysseus are for the most part proud, violent and easily offended thugs.

However the focus of this story is not supposed to be on them. This is the story of the women who are caught up in this war between men. Told primarily from the point of view of Briseis, wife of one of the Trojan kings, the story follows her journey from young and noble Queen to a slave, nurse and pawn in the battle between Agamemnon and Achilles.

It's a wonderful concept and the first part of the story makes from some gripping and intense reading. Suffice to say life is not easy for women in this time regardless of their position in society. Treated like possessions to be used or traded they are never really free. Their value is dependent on how attractive they are and only those who are young, beautiful and connected to a powerful man will ever have some kind of security.

The descriptions in this book are incredibly vivid and it's very easy to imagine yourself there with Briseis. The battle at the very start of the book where Briseis's husband and brothers are brutally slaughtered was especially vivid (and horrifying) but what stood out the most to me were the descriptions of the Greek camp with its casual violence, filth, smell and rat problem. I can very honestly say I'm glad to never have to experience it.

Unfortunately however, while it starts strong I felt it lost its way in the second part when Achilles point of view was introduced. He's such a powerful and intriguing character that he seems to take over the story, pushing Briseis to the side, which to my mind defeats the purpose of the story. He is a fascinating character and there is something both troubling and tragic about him but this was supposed to be the women's story and it felt like it became centered on him. His relationship with Patroclus, his grief, his vengence and his acceptance of his fate. It's a great story but for me shouldn't be the focus of the book.

What makes it more frustrating though is that the author brings in Achilles point of view then doesn't use it to let the reader experience some of the key events. I often felt like I was with the wrong narrator. I wanted to be with Achilles when he goes up against Hector but instead we're with Briseis. Similarly, we kind of miss the final big battle and only hear myths and rumours of what happened. I feel like if the author wanted to tell the story from the female point of view she should have committed to it, and yes we would have missed some key scenes, but we kind of did anyway. I would have preferred it if she'd brought in a different female perspective, possibly someone remaining in Troy.

The writing is however wonderful with vivid descriptions and a really intense feel to it. It's often violent, disturbing and kind of gross but I became completely absorbed in this story and the world. My only complaint was the use of some modern slang in the dialogue which I found a little bit jarring. I do get what the author was attempting but the inclusion of phrases such as "cheers lads" and "gagging for it" didn't feel natural and knocked me out of the story.

It is a brilliant version of the story and I loved that we finally got the female perspective on it. I just wish the author had committed to the idea a little more.

I absolutely loved this book giving women’s perspective of the Trojan war. This is no romantic view of war and the slaughter of young men and boys, it depicts the brutality and gore . The women were used as prizes to be humiliated by their captors. Legends depict Achilles and Hector and all other named warriors as heroic, romanticised characters but this strips all that away showing them as brutal fighters. The captured women do the best they can to survive and maintain their dignity while living under constant threat of rape or murder. Well written and compulsive.

I enjoyed this very much, Pat Barker has such a way of getting right inside her characters and bringing them to life - felt as though I was there.

A thoroughly engrossing read, although the story of Achilles is familiar, the perspective of women especially those captured and misused in war is compelling. There is so much heart in the telling, and although it does not spare us the horrors of the Trojan wars it also reveals so much that is sensitive and heartbreaking, without sentimentality. I could not leave it until it was done.

Having read The Song of Achilles not that long ago, it seemed rather rash to be jumping straight back into the battle over Troy... but I couldn't help myself. There is perfection in the tragic story of Achilles and Patroclus. And in this telling, Briseis features widely, too. She speaks to us as a woman of conquered lands taken as a slave by the conqueror. She is given to Achilles as a prize and serves him in whatever capacity he deems necessary.

This is a strong retelling but one point I found irksome may be just the reason younger generations might take up this ancient tale - the modern parlance. I won't say it drove me mad but it did grate after the richness, and possibly more accurate, dialog found in The Song of Achilles. But, as I say, younger generations may enjoy this version better being 1) narrated, mainly, from a female perspective; 2) using modern language and words and 3) being of a feminist nature, which is all the rage at the moment.

This is a powerful story of pride and honour which still touches my heart, and gives me pangs of anxiety, when I know key events are about to unfold. I love it as I love all stories of mythology but this is a special one and Pat Barker has done a terrific job in retelling this well known story. The characters felt real, the struggle and sense of time seemed authentic and the pain of a long war and lengthier stubborn patch feel as heavy for the reader as it does Achilles, Patroclus and the Myrmidons. Well worth reading, this!

A new view of the Trojan wars, and such a refreshing one. brilliant writing and a whole new understanding of a period of history that has, quite frankly, bored me to death when told from the traditional male warmongering viewpoint.

An action packed story set during the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. All the well known champions appear but this story is based around the plight of the mothers, wives, sons and daughters of the defeated. Very well written story you can almost taste the salt in the air and the sounds of the sea.. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one.

I reallllllly enjoyed this mythological retelling and that’s not a statement I often make but hell someone pass me a toga and loom because I am fully on board!
Although I will say it isn’t exactly what I was expecting.
I was thinking this would be a girl power type, let’s hear it for the women who defy their silence against their butish male counter parts and possibly a few God’s, Goddesses and battles thrown in.
It isn’t that, it’s more a story of admiration for Achilles, which includes the women he uses and abuses, and the men that do the same.
But don’t let that sell it short, this is a great read and I would really recommend it, certainly if Greek/Trojan, Helen of Troy soft retelling is you thing, which it wasn’t mine, until now!
.
Ps I say soft because the speech and writing is generally more modern to me then this type of book normally seems to be.