This is a compelling novelised version of the fall of Troy and the events leading to Achilles' death, told from the viewpoint of a Trojan woman, Breseis, whom Achilles took to be his slave and concubine. It shows how helpless women can be when seen as spoils of war, to be taken at will and bargained over. All the famous names you have heard of are here, their lives and deaths woven into what is in essence a short and brutal tale.

The Regeneration trilogy has to go down as an all time favourite and so I was a little apprehensive about this one.
Whilst I don’t think it can compare, I thoroughly enjoyed this retelling of the Iliad from the perspective of Briseis, Queen of Lyrnessus, who is taken by the Greeks and given to Achilles as his concubine.
Whilst this is mythology it paints a very real picture of the plight of women throughout the ages when they are on the losing side of a war. In some instances death would be preferable.
Having read some of the other reviews I can’t agree that the book just ends up being the story of Achilles. There are a few sections from his POV but the book is predominantly Briseis’ story.
As always, Barker’s writing is beautiful and the characters and plot were brought to life for me.
My thanks to Netgalley for this copy.

There have been many reviews about the narrative of the book, rather than repeat that I thought I'd write about how it feels to read the novel.

I had recently read 'The Song of Achilles' and this novel covers much of the same story.

The difference is way the story is written. Miller's tale is written in pastels and rather Renoir like. Barker's would have been written by Picasso. It's a tirade about the innocent victims of war. The people who become chattels. The horror and the corruption of humanity by repeated violence and the absence of feeling and compassion.

An incredible novel. Visceral, compelling and totally relevant in a world where women and sex are seen as a form of domination or a prize for bad behaviour.

Superb writing, occasionally anachronistic in terms of a 21st century gaze rather that that of a world where god's live and immortality comes from the memories and stories people have of you.

I'd highly recommend it, it's not a bad thing to be disturbed by a novel and forced to consider what happens in a war to women, children and the old.

I'm not familiar with the classics and haven't read The Iliad, although I know the story. Pat Barker's reworking of the tale in The Silence of the Girls Is fresh, vibrant and relevant and I was gripped from the first page.

This book is truly astonishing; brutal, passionate, lyrical and haunting. The perspective is unique and compelling, giving what feels like real insight into the plight and role of women. Abused and ignored, violated and discarded, their story resonates today. The title belies the fact that this book gives women a voice. It's an incredible story with pace and life and this is what truly great writing is all about. Just brilliant from start to finish.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

Fantastic - I've loved everything I've ever read by Pat Barker, and this is no exception. It was a change in time from previous works I've read, but no less compelling - a little-considered viewpoint of the women, and excellent.

I loved this book. From the first sentence I was gripped by the story and the characters. Pat Baker manages to vividly describe the brutal reality of life for women when men, honour, and power are the only important things in society and yet the characters, both the women and the men, are never reduced to two dimensional caricatures. They are kind, thoughtless, selfish, generous, cruel, and always painfully real.

A masterpiece that gives voice to the women who are otherwise often seen as props in the glorious battles of the Ancient Greek heroes. Difficult but compulsive reading full of emotion and candor.

You know how, sometimes, a book gets off to a flying start? Well, The Silence of the Girls got off to such a flying start that I had difficulty keeping up but I did !! You can probably tell by this point that I thoroughly enjoyed the "ride". In my opinion, a novel approach/view to a "historical novel", splendidly done.

"Men don't hear women's silences,' says Pat Barker in an interview about this astonishing book. And how true that is. We are used to men being at the forefront of things and women's concerns as being dismissed as only of interest to women. In The Silence of the Girls we at last hear from one of the women featured in Homer's Iliad. Briseis, a king's daughter, is captured after the downfall of Lymessus and is given to Achilles as a prize. Just think about that for a second. A woman. Given as a prize.

At the beginning of the novel, her voice sings out, capturing the reader immediately. "‘Great Achilles, 'Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles . . . How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him 'the butcher'." Briseis is a wonderful character, her wit and humour are always there even in the darkest times and there are dark times a plenty. Her story is compelling and she is a witness not only to the brutalities of the Trojan war but also to the evils of contemporary war. For, let's face it, this may be about a woman who lived over two thousand years ago but her experiences are those of many women today. Barker uses anachronisms to excellent effect. By making the soldiers sing lewd songs, she reminds us that as these songs still exist, so do the attitudes to women that they portray.

The great mystery is - and a question we should all be asking - why is this novel not on the Booker long list. This is brilliant fiction, relevant to our lives today, and an amazing reimagining of one of the canonic works of European literature.


Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/in-conversation/interviews/2018/aug/pat-barker-the-silence-of-the-girls/#u4kFBz6imIgUXqW2.99

A longish time ago I studied the Iliad at school. In translation. It was a girls school and we all took sides: #teamhector or #teamachilles. I was firmly Team Achilles. His youthful arrogant glory, burnished handsomeness, semi divineness, his love for Patroclus, his wounded pride. His tragic fate. Madeleine Miller's superlative A Song of Achilles reinforced this view of the hero felled by destiny, as all good Greek heroes eventually are.
But of course every story has more than two sides and forgotten, even in a girls school, were the silent voices of the women. We all united in our hatred of Agamemnon and his careless sacrifice of his daughter, felt for poor Cassandra unheeded as she warned against her doom, wept for Andromache enslaved as her son lay broken on the ground below, detested Odysseus as he slept his way around the Aegean sea while his wife spun at home. But the women were footnotes in the men's heroic journeys. In The Silence of the Girls Barker brings them out of the shadows, giving Briseis, the unwilling and unwitting cause of Achilles withdrawal and then death, centre stage and a grief-filled, raw, angry voice.
It would be trite to call this the Iliad for the Me-too generation, but it is the story of every woman whose life is devastated by war, a testament for all those forgotten voices. And in a world where rape is still a weapon, where brutalised 'sex slaves' - or rape victims as they really are - are ostracised by their communities, in a world where women's bodies still belong to the victors, their voices need to be heard, on the news, on the TV and here in fiction.
This is a wonderful book; compelling and lyrical, raw and angry, devastating and unflinching. It should be read as a standalone and as a companion piece to its source material. The girls silence has been broken. Hear them roar.

I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy this retelling of the Iliad as much as Barker’s other books, familiar characters such as Achilles and Odysseus fighting a war I knew from childhood tales of the Trojan horse sounded slightly dull, but within a couple of pages I was spellbound. The “girls” whose silence the title refers to are mainly women, particularly women who’d been married to powerful men who happened to be fighting on the “wrong” side. When your side loses a battle like this then all of the men from the elderly to babies in the womb must die to make sure they can’t rebel against their captors. The women are chattels to be used and abused by their captors as they see fit. First choice goes to Achilles the best fighter and charismatic leader who chooses Briseis. Briseis knows her place and what’s expected of her but inside her head she has a very powerful voice and this voice rings true throughout the novel, showing the terrible fates that rich and poor alike must suffer because Paris “stole” Helen. It might be set in the past but it ias as valid today as it was then, a marvellous read.

THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS is an absolute masterpiece, leaving me reeling from the very first paragraph. Pat Barker's exquisite, excruciating tale of Briseis and her enslavement by Achilles, painting a tale of man scarred by the absence of his mother, and blinded by his own pride. Though Achilles is by no means the centre of the tale - Briseis' determination not to sink under the Greeks' held my attention completely, filling me with strength when I couldn't bear what she underwent. The prose is conversational, giving a confessional atmosphere to the story, knife sharp and brutal in places, lyrical and moving in others. I adore this book and I'm longing to read it again, already.

What a book... what a book, what a book, what A BOOK.

Never have I read something grounded in the Ancient world that brings modern concerns to the forefront like 'The Silence of the Girls'. I was incredibly keen to read this, and was not disappointed at all. Thank you so, so much Penguin for this opportunity.

Although the writing reads like simple modern fiction, without the epic metaphors of Homer and Madeline Miller, the accessible language still manages to capture the atmosphere of what we would imagine surrounds the Trojan war. Barker is able to somehow encapsulate the traumas of sexual assault, and the concerns of life, of death, of hatred, and of fate that continue to haunt us today.

With her excellent plot, studious context, and fantastic pacing, she reminds us that, in reading about the Ancient world, humans find we have not really changed much at all.

Having read all of Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy and enjoyed the books, I was intrigued to find out how she would approach the retelling of The Iliad from Briseis’ point of view. I was not disappointed. As I’ve come to expect from Barker’s work, the style was compelling and taut, driving the narrative forward at a cracking pace while still capturing the inner world of her main character. Her examination of war as seen from the perspective of the helpless women used and abused as slaves was equally fascinating and appalling and gave the traditional spin on this narrative a different feel. While other retellings focus on the alleged heroic nature of battle, in this novel we see the grim reality of those forced to live with the consequences. War comes out as being futile, a vainglorious activity that constantly contradicts itself. I didn’t finish the book feeling uplifted: it is hard to do so when we see how even today the same kind of barbarities are still being committed around the world. I did however finish it with a different view and approach to so-called classic or epic tales and remain as ever a fan of Pat Barker’s work.

I'm a little torn on this one - on one hand it felt like a rehash of all the Trojan tales that I know son well. On the other it was well done, impassioned and brought to life the more 'minor' characters.

Everyone knows the stories of Achilles and Patroclus, but Briseis, Queen of Lyrnessus and now slave to the Greeks,is not so well known. In many ways what made this book particularly good was Barker's emphasis on telling the stories of the Trojan women who were enslaved to the Greeks (as well as the details of the Greek encampment and of warfare) whilst ultimately emphasising that their own stories gave been lost to those of the male heroes. I particularly liked the final (ambiguous) lines.

This is an old story told well.

The Silence of the Girls is bound to be a classic - it is beautifully and powerfully written. Ordinarily this is not the sort of book I would choose to read as I mostly read for pleasure. But I am so happy to have read it and happier still to recommend it. It is utterly compelling, extraordinarily meaningful and still so very relevant. This is a book that needs to be widely read and taught to future generations so that we might learn from it!

Giving a voice to those who were – and, at times still are – the spoils of war

Pat Barker has long celebrated ‘ordinary’ people who are swept up in the making of history – which, sadly, is often the history of conflict. She does not forget that the lives of the untold millions matter, even if we don’t know their names

In this book, she goes for the jugular of very ancient conflicts indeed - the story told in The Iliad – we know the names of various kingly and warrior characters, but the women are few and far between. Helen, wife of Menelaus, captured by Paris,(did she run or was she abducted?) is probably the most recognisable name, reduced to that face that launched a thousand ships – as long long wars between Greece and Troy ensued

In this wonderful book The Silence of the Girls her central voice, the person whose story is followed, Is Briseis. Wife of a king, who was one of Troy’s allies (and of course, Briseis had no say in her choice of husband) when her husband’s kingdom is sacked by the Greeks – particularly Achilles, she becomes part of his booty. Her husband, her brothers, and all the males are automatically killed – including boy children. This is also the fate of women who have children in the womb – these might grow up to avenge their fathers in the fullness of time.

Other women are spoils, like material goods, to be shared by the victors. The high born may be the gift to commanders and kings, and the best that can be hoped for is to find favour. Otherwise, the women are there to be ‘enjoyed’ by the many.

This is indeed a brutal and a harrowing book, but Barker does not just leave Briseis and others as just brutalised victims. Women lived through this kind of dire history, still having to find a way to make their own lives matter.

More than the story of battling kings, - Priam, Agamemnon - bloody warrior heroes – Hector, Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus – it is the women, the powerless, the ones without the fine heroic lays devoted to their stories – who occupy the foreground here. And Barker makes me believe that these, who have come to us only as names, might indeed have been truly as she imagines them.

Recounting Priam, king of Troy, in supplication for the return of the broken and humiliated body of his son, Briseis contrasts the power a defeated king may still wield, with the lives, the lack of power, of the women, even the most powerful, who are objects of ownership, in her society:

I do what no man before me has ever done. I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son

Those words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides by the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought:

And 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

She does of course not flinch from how these human spoils of war were treated – the women who ‘belonged’ to the vanquished were there to slake the sexual thirst of the army just as captured wine and livestock were there to slake their appetite for food and drink – but she does not focus on the blow by blow, the awful and graphic details of their treatment by the conquering army. How, in this world, did these women live. What were their thoughts, their feelings, how did they adapt, how connect, how survive? Victims of war – but also individuals with histories – and also perhaps, desires for a future, perhaps even an imagination for the ending of endless war.

I recommend this, despite its awful subject matter, without reservation. Whilst steeped in the physical reality of those ancient times (she is marvellously visceral about what a battle encampment might have been like) the present, and the still far from equal lives of girls and women, in some parts of the world more obviously than in others, knocked insistently in my thoughts.

Books like this are wondrously important, wondrously imaginative, wondrously laying out myth and reality together

For those who know the story of the Iliad, repetition in this review would be unnecessary – but, more importantly, for those who don’t spoilers should not be revealed.

However, I cannot avoid this rather wonderful ‘preview opener’ a quote from Philip Roth’s The Human Stain’ which Barker quotes before her own novel begins :

“You know how European literature begins?” he’d ask….”With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight” And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines…. “Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles…Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men and great Achilles” And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It’s as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war”

I received this as a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

Pat Barker: The Silence of the Girls

The great epics of literature tend to be written by men and are mainly about men. Yes, I am well aware of The Tale of the Genji and Sappho, of women from Brunhilda to Cleopatra and of all the women that appear in Greek legends, from goddesses such as Diana and Aphrodite, the Muses and the Erinnyes, and Helen of Troy, Penelope and Clytemnestra. Yet all too often these tales are written about men and women are often seen not so much as individuals but in their relationship to men – as wives, mothers, daughters, lovers, slaves and so on, while the men get on with the important business which, all too often, means fighting other men. or, less so, carrying out great tasks.

Homer is very much a case in point. We do not know who Homer was. We do not know what sex Homer was. We do not know if Homer was one person or several people, with perhaps an original, possibly illiterate poet whose work was later transcribed and amended by one or more scribes. Most experts favour the latter theory and most experts think he/they was/were male. Andrew Dalby thinks Homer was a woman, though his views are not accepted by most scholars. Despite the fact that, in the Odyssey in particular, where Ulysses’ fate is often decided by a woman (Athena, Calypso, Nausicaa), in the Iliad the book is definitely a man’s book, not least because much of it is about men fighting and killing (albeit over a woman). In short, we almost entirely get the man’s point of view.

Pat Barker is best known for her World War I novels which do feature women but, because they are about war, tend to feature men much more. Her early works do feature women and the problems they have living in a bleak Northern English city. However, I am not sure that Barker would really be described as a feminist writer. However, in this book she takes The Iliad and looks at it from the women’s perspective, particularly the suffering the women have to endure during the Trojan War.

She starts off with a quote from Philip Roth’s The Human Stain which, more or less, sums up The Iliad: And what are they quarreling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It’s as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarreling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war.

Our heroine is Briseis. Before the Greeks attacked Troy, they fought and conquered Lyrnessus. Lyrnessus was a small settlement near Troy. Its exact location has not been determined. It was rule by King Mynes who was married to Briseis. The book starts with the attack of the Greeks on Lyrnessus. The Greeks have no difficulty in capturing the town and, once they do, they slaughter the men, loot the town and rape and enslave the women. We see all of this from Briseis’ point of view. She is captured by Achilles. She is his trophy.

Agamemnon is the king of the Greeks and hence commander in chief of the Greek army. He is not a very nice man. He had sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to get a fair wind for Troy. (He will later pay the price for this as his wife, Iphigenia’s mother, Clytemnestra, is understandably not very happy about this. All this will happen well after the events in this book.). His trophy is Chryseis, who is very beautiful but seems to be about twelve years old.

Briseis, as Achilles’ slave, has various roles. In particular, of course, he uses her for rough sex. The Greek warriors do not seem big on the romantic approach to sex. She also prepares his meals, serves him and his friends and so on. While she does not suffer too much (if you do not consider being raped nightly too much), it is clearly a large step down from being a queen. However, she does observe the treatment of other women who suffer much more: used for sexual purposes by many men, beaten and often starved.

Chryses (who may be Briseis’ uncle) comes to the Greek camp to ransom his daughter. Agamemnon rejects him. Chryses is a priest of Apollo and he prays to Apollo for help. Things had been going well for the Greeks but then a plague strikes the camp. The rats die and then the men do. (Of course, it falls to the women to care for the sick men.). It is clear to everyone that Agamemnon’s refusal to ransom Chryseis is the reason as Apollo is offended by the insult to one of his priests. Finally and reluctantly, Agamemnon ransoms Chryseis. However, Agamemnon now does not have a trophy woman and he demands Briseis as his prize. Achilles has to hand her over but he is so insulted that he now refuses to fight any more, a big loss to the Greeks as he is by far their best fighter.

Briseis, of course, has no choice in the matter and becomes Agamemnon’s concubine. He has sex with her once but in a Bill-Clintonesque move, he will later deny having had sex with her as, using Barker’s delicate terminology, he uses the back door.

With Achilles out of the way, the Trojans gain the ascendant. (Note that neither of the two famous legends involved here – the Wooden Horse of Troy and Achilles’ death from a poisoned arrow in his ankle, his only vulnerable spot, occur in the Iliad but come from other sources, so they do not figure in this book, except for a passing mention about Achilles’ death.)

When Troy is finally captured, we learn of the Greeks’ plans from Briseis. Every man and boy killed – and that would include my brother-in- law – pregnant women to be speared in the belly on the off chance their child would be a boy, and for the other women, gang rape, beatings, mutilation, slavery. A few women – or rather a few very young girls, mainly of royal or aristocratic birth – would be shared out among the kings. Briseis had been returned to Achilles before his death but is now, after his death, passed to someone else.

Barker (re)tells the story of the Iliad well, not least because we see what happens from the point of view of Briseis. While she describes the fighting, some of which she sees and some of which she learns about, as the dead and wounded are brought back to the camp. For a man, all of it would be seen either as a glorious victory (if you are on the winning side) or a terrible tragedy (if you are on the losing side). For Briseis, it is all horrible. While being grief-stricken at the loss of her family and friends, both in Lyrnessus and Troy, she does not exult when the Greeks are being beaten, even though she clearly supports the Trojans (her sister is married to one and is in Troy). She has a certain sympathy for the Greeks suffering from wounds or from the plague. She comments on Achilles’ many scars with a degree of concern.

However, above all, we see the role of women compared to the role of men. The women are, of course, wives, mothers, sisters and so on. However, once they are defeated and captured, they cease to be human but become chattels. They are there for sex, of course, but also to wait on the men, to nurse them when ill or wounded, to prepare their food and drink, to comfort them and to wash the dead. In short, the men need the women. Even the great Achilles goes running to Mummy for comfort (she is on one of the ships).

We also see that the men are vulgar, aggressive, drunkards, violent (and not just towards the enemy) and abusive. Few have any redeeming features. Barker makes a strong comparison with the women, the women as victims, but also the women as nurses, as mothers, as carers, as comforters. While Barker is referring to the 11th-12th centuries B.C. (the era when the Trojan War might have taken place), she may well also be pointing out that men have not made much improvement in the three thousand years since. The book takes its title from a comment Barker makes near the end: Silence becomes a woman …, a view, she is clearly saying, many men subscribe to.

There is no doubt that this is really a fascinating novel. If you are familiar with the Iliad, it will be interesting to see the events of the book seen from an entirely different perspective. If you are not particular familiar with Iliad, you will learn of the events Homer describes but not in the way Homer describes them.

I’m a sucker for retellings of familiar stories, so this had me from the start. It’s a retelling do the Trojan war through the eyes of Briseis, a character who’s point of view has not been shown in literature.

I thought his book was excellent. It explores its themes of slavery and the treatment of women perfectly and I was hooked from start to finish

First things, first. The Silence of the Girls is the best book that I have read so far this year.

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

Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

Not bad for an opening paragraph and the book just gets better. Pat Barker has set about retelling The Iliad. Only this time instead of seeing the story told from the men’s point of view we look through a 19 year old girl’s eyes. Briseis, Queen of Lyrnessus has been taken captive after the Greek’s sacked her city, she has been given to Achilles as his prize of honour. He has killed her brothers and her husband and now she must sleep with him.

The Silence of the Girls is all about war. It goes on all around us but apart from watching the sacking of Lyrnessus from the high walls of its citadel we never see any fighting. Once they are captured the women never leave the camp, they can hear the battle, but see it. They tend the dying, dress the dead but never set foot on the field of battle itself.

Briseis appears in The Iliad we see her given to Achilles, we see Agamemnon take her and the pair feud over her. We don’t, however see the other captive women. The Silence of the Girls shows us life in the rape camps. Women do have a choice, they can sleep with their captors or die. And yet, and yet. Achilles does not seem to be a total monster. Agamemnon is awful, but then he is awful in The Iliad too. This is a retelling of the tale for the #MeToo generation and yet Pat Barker must have started writing it before the hashtag.

This is a story that has been told over and over again for thousands of years. Chances are that you will have a seen a film based on the book, maybe read The Iliad itself and if not, then the tale of Helen of Troy will have wafted past at some point. Even though you know what is going to happen, I sat up long into the night reading just one more page. Now the search is on, will I read a better book this year?

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
Published by Penguin
Hardback £18.99, Kindle £9.99
Seeking inspiration for your next read? Check out my Best Books 2017 post

Disclosure: The Silence of the Girls was sent to me via NetGalley in return for an honest review