There have been a few books written about women in the Trojan wars and Briseis, the Queen of King Mynes of Lyrnessus, features prominently in others but Pat Barker puts a different gloss on the story.

First, the role of the gods is downplayed. Homer, in The Iliad, puts them centre stage but, here, they seem to be more of an excuse for events than the driving force. The Trojan War in this novel is a nasty dispute between men over a woman which turns into a protracted and pointless conflict. The map is deliberately small with two armies lined up against each other outside the walls of Troy and a battleground between them. Every day, the armies and their hero leaders go out to fight because, well, that is what they do, while the women work on looms.

Second, there is a brutal frankness about how the women are described. They are in the novel but neither romanticised nor at the centre. After the fall of Lyrnessus and the death of the King and his family in the conflict, Briseis is taken as a slave and trophy. She ends up with Achilles which is probably not the worst end she could have faced at that venture. There’s no drama about this. The men and the boys are murdered and the women are raped and enslaved. That’s just what happens when you conquer a city. And, once you’re a slave, you’re just an object to be transacted as and when.

Third, when that happens it is at the whim of your hero owner. These famous names are pompous and petulant as well as being soaked in blood, and a stupid argument between Agamemnon and Achilles causes more death and destruction than required and ends with Briseis being transferred to Agamemnon. Jostling for position and status, taking easy offence and needing constant reassurance, the heroes are deranged. Pat Barker manages to give the impression that they are all suffering from traumatic stress disorders. They sleep badly, kill people on whims, make bad decisions and so on. It’s not surprising. They’ve been on this pointless killing spree for any number of years and they’ve ended up with these two front lines and a mucky mess of no man’s land in between. Sounds familiar?

Briseis strikes up some kind of connection with Patroclus, the close friend of Achilles. After Achilles is instrumental in his death, really only because of his arrogance in letting him take his place in the battle, and after Achilles has killed Hector and, finally, let his (Hector’s) father King Priam have the body, Achilles realises that in some way he needs her support. In some novels this might be played quite sentimentally but not here. Achilles is simply falling apart and needs a bit of sticking plaster before he dies too.

Then, Troy falls and, understandably, there is more murder and rape and then the besieging army sets off home. Just to make sure they get there and just to rub in what this story is really all about, they brutally sacrifice King Priam’s young daughter, Polyxena, in the hope that the weather will be good for the journey, yes really.

She’s gagged before being killed for trying to speak. It’s not good in this world for the chaps to be cursed by someone who is being sacrificed especially an innocent girl so, like all the other women in the narrative, she is silenced. Even Briseis who, to all intents and purposes, is a heroine knows when to keep her mouth shut – because ‘silence becomes a woman’ especially a disempowered slave.

The strength of the novel is that this is a brutish narrative about stupid men having even more stupid arguments. It’s not heroic to die like cattle but lots do and there’s nothing the women can do about it except survive, help the wounded, dress the corpses and keep quiet. That’s when you realise that Pat Barker isn’t just writing about the Trojan wars but about all of them in all of their grand futility. It’s a powerful read.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker is a retelling of the Illiad through the eyes of Briseis.. Briseis was the mythical queen of Lyrnessus at the time of the Trojan War. She was trapped in the city as the Greeks ransacked the city. She saw Achilles, the most brutal of men, kill her husband and sons. She is taken prisoner and given to Achilles as a prize by The Army for the victory.

Briseis is now a slave and life is not pleasant in the camp. There is rape, humiliation and brutality as women are treated as worthless possessions and once the ‘owner’ is tired of them they are passed around the soldier. It is an atmospheric, and at times brutal, read and brings to life the miserable existence of women of that time. I can thoroughly recommend it.

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

An intriguing and gripping retelling of ancient myths that immerse you in to the lives of such infamous legends

Fascinating re-telling of the taking of Troy, from a woman's perspective.

Breisis has been 'given' to Achilles after a victory. This tells the old tale of how they battled the Trojans each day and life in the camp under Agammemnon's rule.

Cameraderie between fighters, casual cruelty and bloodshed dominate their lives. And for the women it means a possible change in circumstances, potentially from royalty to slavery.

Interesting re-telling.

. Another take on the tale of Achilles you might say but this is more than that. A silent account mostly from the thoughts and feelings from Breseis who has been reduced to the status of slave after the fall and sack of Lyrnessus. Breseis relates an account of the treatment of her and the other women but cannot voice this aloud hence the title The Silence of the Girls is an appropriate choice.
The narration is very well done and conveys the horrors she sees and her feelings which are complex and varied. It is a realistic account of the brutality meted out and the abuse and rape of the women in the Greek camp and the appalling conditions that they are living under. The women are handed out as prizes and we see little allowance for their feelings and little humanity from the victors.Patroclus, friend of Achilles possibly perhaps the exception.
We find this to be a much different portrayal of the events told of in Homers account who focuses on the heroic deeds of those such as Achilles and Hector and little of the trauma of the women and children who were left alive.These woman are ignored at best, abused and treated as spoils of war with no rights or say in any of it.
Not an easy read but captures a more realistic view of the brutality of the siege of Troy and of what occurred from the perspective of an enslaved woman strong enough to survive. Will definitely recommend.

After the fall of her city, during the nine years of the Trojan War, Briseis (a Trojan queen) is taken slave by Achilles. She's witnessed this man killing her family and now has to share his bed, with no rights of her own. Pat Barker takes the familiar story of The Iliad and gives it a fresh feminist twist: all the women who have been silenced down the centuries are finally given a voice. 'Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles' is simply called 'the butcher'.

In the face of daily and hourly oppression where she no longer feels 'like anything that might have a name', Briseis tries to retain her humanity. Walking on the beach she picks up a pebble that has remained sharp in spite of the 'sea's relentless grinding' - a symbol of her resilience. We quickly find out that she still has 'that obstinate little stone...here now on the palm of my hand'; so we know from the beginning that she'll survive. But this doesn't make the story any less dramatic and wonderfully atmospheric, where the sea is 'dark and heaving, breaking curd-white against the black bows of their ships.' Although this is a story based on Greek myths, where gods and goddesses have the last say, the pervading sense is one of the terrible human waste of war. Briseis imagines a future audience: 'They won't want to e 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?' And she gives us back The Iliad.

Nobody can write war like Pat Barker. Not the romanticised bloody battles which are so often written about, but the heart rending, visceral, brutal effect that war has on humanity.
Back in college I read Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy and it connected me with WWI in a way that nothing else had managed. The Silence of the Girls had a similar effect. It took one of the greatest Greek myths ever told and made it accessible. The familiar characters became flesh and blood, more flawed than heroic and the women who had been previously ignored became their own people, with personalities and hopes. Their fear and disgust became mine and I could feel myself in their camp, smelling the blood and the sweat and following them around as they tried to survive.
I loved Briseis and couldn’t help rooting for her to escape Achilles and find some kind of happiness in her future.
I found it really important that this book wasn’t a love story. Briseis didn’t fall helplessly in love with the man who enslaved her. She didn’t forget that he had murdered her family and Pat Barker doesn’t shy away from the fact that these so called heroes are raping women they have claimed as prizes. It is such an important book and it really makes you think about the way these stories have classically been told, with faceless women doing what they are told because the men deserve their spoils of war.
I thoroughly recommend this book, it’s one of my top reads of the year.

This is a very good modern re-telling of the Iliad. It's told mainly from a 1st person perspective, but there are 3rd person chapters when other voices are needed like Achilles.
No doubt Barker is a very good story teller. I loved her previous works, and this is no exception. She wrote about wars before and it shows here as well that it's her forte. She has such talent to write about trauma, survival and recovery. That's why it's not a surprise she chose to re-tell Iliad.
I definitely loved it and would recommend everyone to have a piece of Barker's genious.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

It's impossible not to remember Atwood's Penelopiad whilst reading Silence of the Girls, but I found this one much straighter and stronger. Trojan war have been told many times in many books and stories, yet Barker still captures the story in an imaginative and original way and binds the reader into the magical spin of story telling. Highly recommended and I am hoping to see this book in a reputable prize long list next year.

Wow wow wow. An amazing read, bringing out the female voices silenced from the story of the Trojan war. A brilliant read - certainly one of the top books of the year for me.

Big thank you to NetGalley and Penguin/Hamish Hamilton for the ARC

The Silence of the Girls tells the last year of the Trojan war from the perspective of Briseis. Briseis was the queen of Lyrnessus, but after it is sacked by the Greeks she falls from royalty to slavery. When Lyrnessus is destroyed, all the men, including (unborn) babies, are killed and the women are taken as slaves. Briseis is awarded to Achilles as his prize for the battle, she will be his property, concubine and slave. Even though Achilles takes to her, because she reminds him of his mother the nereid Thetis, it is kind Patroclus Achilles' close friend who is the only one who sees her as a person. When Agamemnon is forced to let his own prize Chriseis go home to get back into favour with Apollo he demands Achilles to hand over his prize to him. Briseis changes hands and Achilles refuses to fight anymore resulting almost in losing the war.

What makes this such a powerful book for me is that Pat Barker chose to stay close to the traditional story as told in the Iliad, only changing the point of view. She doesn't make Briseis into a heroine. Briseis is not credited with winning the war behind the scenes and there is no tacky love story to smooth over the fact that these women were raped by the men who murdered their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons.

The only affection that arises is for Patroclus. It is not romantic, but based on his care for her. He is kind and tries to protect her, where Achilles only wants her because she smells of the sea and reminds him of his mother.

The relationships with other women are also free from soggy emotions. There are no bff's, just women who are in the same boat and understand each other's situation.

Briseis simply wants to be safe and has a better chance of that being with Achilles. Agamemnon sometimes shares women he has lost interest in with his troops, which leads to group rape and these women end up in a deplorable state searching for food among the waste heaps. This gives Briseis a personal interest in the dispute between Agamemnon and Achilles without love or emotions coming into play.

Despite the utterly passive position the women are in the men make sure to blame them for whatever goes wrong:

"I was no longer the outward and visible sign of Agamemnon's power and Achilles' humiliation. No, I'd become something altogether more sinister: I was the girl who'd caused the quarrel. Oh, yes, I'd caused it - much in the same way, I suppose, as a bone is responsible for a dogfight."

"There was a legend - it tells you everything, really - that whenever Helen cut a thread in her weaving, a man died on the battlefield. She was responsible for every death."

"Achilles got up and stood at the centre of the ring. He felt nothing but shame, he said, that he and his dear comrade Agamemnon had quarrelled over a girl, had nearly come to blows over her for all the world like a couple of drunken sailors in a bar. Better the girl had died when he took her city, better if a stray arrow had caught her then and ended her life. How much grief and suffering the Greeks would have been spared. How many brave men, now dead, would still be alive....He was blaming me for Patroclus."

Pat Barker’s reimagining of the Seige of Troy pulls you into a world of grief and hopelessness where women have no choice and no voice.
Taken as spoils of war by the victors and used as slaves in the kitchens, wash-houses and beds of their owners, the woman watch and wait as the conflict drags on to its inevitable conclusion.
Alternate chapters are narrated by Briseis - a Trojan Queen captured by the Greeks - and Achilles, the god-like Greek hero who is given Briseis as his slave.
This is such an important book and should not be missed.

My Thoughts

In The Silence of the Girls, women who up until now were mostly ‘silenced’ regarding the story of the Trojan War, are given a voice. How wonderful! So for all Greek tragedy lovers out there, this is basically a re-telling of the final few scenes from, The Iliad’s Trojan War but from the voice of a Greek slave. The voice here is that of Briseis, a Trojan captive given to Achilles as a war prize.

“I was no longer the outward and visible sign of Agamemnon’s power and Achilles’ humiliation. No, I’d become something altogether more sinister: I was the girl who’d caused the quarrel. Oh, yes, I’d caused it – in much the same way, I suppose, as a bone is responsible for a dogfight.”

The author tells the story of the female characters who lie in the background of this ancient Greek epic. The women who normally we never hear from, are now given a voice - their thoughts and feelings. These are the women who are at the mercy of their captors, the very men who killed their fathers, brothers, husbands and now find themselves trying to survive and make an existence (I won’t say ‘life’) for themselves. Through Briseis eyes, the reader is given front row seats to not only the support network among other female captives, but also the rift between Agamemnon and Achilles and the impact of their fallout, not only on the war, but also to pertinent individuals.

“Something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on, had made me turn back. Perhaps no more than a feeling that this was my place now, that I had to make my life work here.”

I feel this really is sublime writing in portraying not only the resilience but also determination, healing and angst of both sides of this tragic tale - Greek and Trojan. The everyday brutalities are front and centre as you are faced with not only war, violence and ensuing slavery, but the pertinent issues of rape, slavery and death. This is just so unique as this previously male dominated story is now given the yin to its yang, the light to its shade- the female voice has been awaken.

“...we spent the nights curled up like spiders at the centre of our webs. Only we weren’t the spiders; we were the flies.”

If you have read and loved, The Song of Achilles or The Iliad, you will be entranced by this haunting tale. The horror of war, the mistreatment of women matched against the love and strength of characters is truly moving. The Silence of the Girls sheds light on a well told Greek tale and will leave you richer for the experience.

There was nothing to be gained by clinging to a past that no longer existed. But I did cling to it, because in that lost world I’d been somebody, a person with a role in life. And I felt if I let that go, I’d be losing the last vestige of myself.



This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release

I have been obsessed with Greek Mythology for years and in particular with the Trojan War. I find it’s cast of characters so fantastic and endlessly intriguing. So, I was really eager to read this story about the siege of Troy from the almost unheard of perspective of the women involved - particularly Briseis - a queen who becomes a slave to the well known legend, Achilles. This unique perspective was fascinating and sorely needed because stories of the Trojan War are almost always focussed on the men or gods involved and in many ways they glorify the horrific violence of war until the reader almost becomes anaesthetised to it. That is not the case here. Barker doesn’t hold back at all in depicting the horror of war and it’s aftermath. Her writing is brutal at times and perfectly encapsulates how pointless all the death can feel. She also doesn’t hesitate to show how an individual’s personal failings (mainly arrogance and pride) can have incredibly far reaching consequences. This book is fiction, but it still feels completely relevant because no matter the reason for war, it always results in the same devastation and grief.

I really enjoyed how Briseis’ story framed famous names like Odysseus, Achilles and Agamemnon in a very different light. Her perceptions add so many different layers to the glorious stories about these men. Something else I enjoyed, which I wasn’t expecting at all, is that there were some really witty and humorous moments. They aren’t frequent but they bring moments of levity to a story with a great deal of hardship.

The only negative I have is that sometimes the language felt slightly modern to me. This may have been intentional as a way to make the story even more intensely relatable (which it mostly did) but just occasionally I found it a little distracting. Overall though, I absolutely loved The Silence of the Girls. It is intelligently written, thrilling and a new, creative take on a very old story.

A fabulous read seeing Troy from another angle, that of the women. Full of fight, love, fear and of course, death. A well-written read for those that love historical reads or Greek mythology.

‘Every man in the city died that day, fighting at the gates or on the palace steps.’

Briseis is 19 years old when the Trojan city of Lyrnessus falls to the Greeks. Her husband, King Mynes and her four brothers along with every other man in the city is butchered and left to rot. The women left behind know what will happen next, and some of Briseis’s companions choose death, rather than rape and slavery. Briseis chooses life: a queen who suddenly becomes a slave, awarded to Achilles as a prize of war.

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

This novel is a telling of the Trojan War from a woman’s perspective. The Trojan War dragged on for years as the Greeks sought to reclaim Helen from Paris of Troy and return her to Menelaus of Sparta. The main characters are known to us from The Iliad: a legend of heroes. But although Helen is at the centre of the war, the few other women who are mentioned are peripheral.

So, how does the Trojan War look through the eyes of a female captive? Briseis finds herself sharing a hut with her family’s murderer Achilles, his lifelong companion Patroclus, and his slave. She experiences the pestilence and the mud, sees the casualties. And beneath his hero-status, Achilles is both proud and insecure. Agamemnon is unable to admit when he is wrong and incapable of marshalling the forces he has effectively. No wonder the war has dragged on for so many years!

But the women? How do they survive? What do they talk about when they are together? That’s the strength of this novel: Briseis’s interactions with other women, her observations of the men, her feelings about being a captive. The women may largely be invisible to the men who have captured them, but they are not inanimate objects. It’s not necessary to have read The Iliad to be able to follow this story (although I am tempted to reread it).

While most of the novel is narrated by Briseis, some chapters are written from Achilles’s perspective. I have mixed feelings about that. While it does allow the story to incorporate a broader perspective (Briseis cannot be omnipresent), I wanted to hear more from the other women who were captured.

I enjoyed the novel but would have like to have read about more of ‘the Girls’ who were silent.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books (UK) for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Having been advised to read Pat Barker's "Regeneration Trilogy" for my degree some years ago I eagerly took the offer to read the latest book by this author but having done so I am left with a somewhat torn opinion.

The title reflects a woman's perspective during the Trojan Wars and in particular that of Briseis, a Trojan queen, captured by Achilles and forced to live a degrading existence - it wasn't a life - in the brutal world of her Greek captors. But part way through the book it changes to Achilles perspective at some length and in particular his relationship with his lifelong friend and deputy Patroclus. The author takes us through and beyond the latter's death in battle and through in deed to the eventual slaying of Achilles himself. Were we being asked to perhaps consider Achilles in a different light to that of the monster Briseis was telling us about? While a different perspective to that of Briseis must be necessary could this also have come from some of the other desperate women that had no voice? The book is called, "The Silence of the Girls", plural. I felt that the character of Briseis could possibly have been more developed with the other captured women in equally if not worse situations than her. This is merely hinted at.

I also felt the use of modern language with words such as "shop-soiled" and "cheers" broke up the intensity of some of the writing and destroyed its flow. Its intermittent use, often in italics, took me as a reader momentarily out of the story.

However, these comments apart, I recommend it as a very good book to read when today about 30 centuries on from these times the taking of defenceless women still occurs in some parts of the world by obsessive regimes and armies. Their lives and the lives of their families devastated by war.


Thank you Penguin and NetGalley.

Pat Barker writes personal stories of people in war with exceptional skill, and I have always been a bit of a sucker for retellings of legends from a different viewpoint, so this new novel was very eagerly awaited. And it does not disappoint.

No gentle opening here, we are sucked straight into the mayhem of a city about to b comprehensively sacked. Briseis, 19 years old and the sheltered young wife of the ineffectual king of the Trojan city of Lyrnessus, takes refuge in the citadel as the Greeks take the city, egged on by Achilles’ unearthly war cry. From her dubious vantage point on the ramparts she watches as her husband and four brothers and every last man in the city are mercilessly butchered and their bodies left to rot, never to be buried and cross over to Hades. Like all the other women present, she knows what comes next - rape, slavery, going from being a king’s wife to being, at best, some Greek warlord’s bed slave. Yet, watching some of her companions fling themselves to their death rather than face that prospect, she chooses to live.

Awarded to Achilles, who claims the king’s wife as his prize, Briseis finds herself sharing a hut with her family’s murderer, as well as his lifelong companion Patroclus and his slave. Seen through the eyes and told in the voice of Briseis, the Greeks, nine years into their war, are a far cry from the band of heroes familiar from legend. Achilles despises Agamemnon, with good reason given Briseis’ description of a fatally proud, blustery man who is incapable of coming up with a winning strategy, feels threatened by Achilles’ undoubted superiority in the field, and never learns from his mistakes or has the insight or grace to recognise and admit when he is in the wrong. Achilles himself is no demi-god, but rather behaves like the abandoned child he is, drawn to and simultaneously oppressed by his sea goddess mother Thetis and always needing to feel he is the best. Loyal to his Myrmidons, no doubt, but only insofar as they are there to contribute to his personal glory. Odysseus features only in glimpses, but is wickedly portrayed as a cunning fox who seems to enjoy stirring up trouble when he can. It is Patroclus who comes off best - outwardly subservient to Achilles, but very much his equal in the relationship (which is not sexual in this telling), and one of the few Greeks who is kind to Briseis and sees her as a person.

Having read the Ghost Road trilogy multiple times, what kept striking me as I read this book were the parallels drawn by Pat Barker between the two wars, aeons apart. Two wars which were both meant to be over in a matter of months but dragged on for years; both marked by petty quarrels, butchery, men reduced to lumps of festering meat, pestilence, mud, the overwhelming flood of casualties after battles, and at the heart of them both, weak and obstinate leaders who put their ideals of pride and glory before the human lives they have charge of.

But fundamentally, this is the timeless story of how women survive. Almost invisible to their masters, and of less importance to them than their dogs, they forge friendships, support each other, finds ways of subverting the Greeks, and somehow find the capacity to survive, and laugh, and sometimes pity their captors, and remain unbroken. And sometimes, to win the respect of their captors. Briseis knows the value of silence in her day to day life as a slave, but her voice is loud and clear in the narration of her story. And this is where the only slightly jarring note comes in - every now and then, the narrative voice changes to the third person, and I found it interrupted the flow. It happens when Briseis could not possibly be present to describe events that are needed for continuity, but it feels a tad clumsy as a device. However, it is a tiny, tiny flaw in an otherwise riveting and thought-provoking read.

A sad read for me but still very enjoyable. Greek mythology speaks to me, but I didn’t know as much as I thought I did! The writing was brilliant and this is a fantastic read!

This is an incredibly sad book, whether you know how the siege of Troy ended or not. I loved this book so much. The writing is just amazing. I was immersed in the place and the life of Briseis. I cannot recommend it more highly. A fascinating portrayal of Ancient Greek society.