The writing was absolutely fabulous! & the setting - so vivid & heart-wrenching. I couldn't put this down & devoured it in just a few days. Looking forward to reading more of Pat Barker's work at some point.

(2.5 stars) I had high hopes for this book and it just didn’t meet them. Some parts were excellent, the characterisation and the setting for example, I also loved the way it didnt shy away from the brutality of war. However, I wish the author had stuck to just giving us Briseis‘ point of view, i didn’t like when chapters randomly shifted to the third person, and i feel like the prose was at times clunky and not polished enough.

I've always prided myself on enjoying Greek Mythology, so when I finally got around to reading this I was slightly disappointed. I know this is clearly an instance of it being me and not the book, because a lot of my friends really enjoyed this. However, I felt that while the story itself was interesting, there were quite a few scenes that really bogged down the entire story. I also felt that the modern writing here was extremely jarring and made it difficult to fully connect to the story.

This book is powerful, dark, and doesn't hold any punches. I was very enthralled in the beginning but found as the narration went on and strayed away from Briseis, that I found it less impactful. I think it would have been stronger if it had remained her POV entirely or if it had shifted to the other women rather than an omniscient one. I do maintain that the idea of this novel- retelling greek classics from the women's point of view- is necessary. I would love to read more of Barker's work in the future. Recommended for fans of ancient Greece but not for the faint of heart (or stomach).

So basically, the author set out to write The Iliad from the point of view of Briseis, who would have been more of a minor character in the Iliad, except she was previously a queen, but became Achilles' bed slave after her city is sacked, which led to a feud between Agamennon and Achilles, which is a whole thing that I won't get into. But I was excited to read a feminist point of view of this story after reading Song of Achilles (really wonderful book from the POV of Patroclus), but it gives very little of Briseis's backstory, and eventually fades from her point of view to just being another story about Achilles, which was disappointing.

I recieved an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book and will recommend it often!

“Looking back, it seemed to me I’d been trying to escape not just from the camp, but from Achilles's story; and I’d failed. Because make no mistake, this was his story—his anger, his grief, his story. I was angry, I was grieving, but somehow that didn’t matter.”

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker is a feminist retelling of Homer's The Iliad, centering on the Trojan War, but told through the eyes of Briseis. I think it is perhaps important to know the original mythology behind this book because it really brings a bigger and deeper meaning to it that maybe we didn't originally consider. This book certainly doesn't shy away from the absolute horrors of the Trojan War and doesn't easily paint Achilles as the gilded hero. The Greeks aren't automatically given the hero title, either. In this novel, you truly see it from all sides. It's a painful read at times but I think an important one. We aren't so often given the voice of the silenced, the tortured, the raped and murdered... but here we do get to see how they feel and how this 10 year long war affects them and their psyche. The themes of war and how bad it can be is heavily inferred in this book and I'm thankful for that. Senseless acts of violence generation after generation, passed from father to son and rinse and repeat, isn't the ideal life or ideal world to be living in. Through it all, you see the strength it takes to endure.

I love the layers and complexity of this book and if you enjoy any kind of mythology, I think you will take something from this book like I did. I definitely recommend this one.

I love Greek mythology and really prefer to take in these stories by novels like this one. If you enjoyed Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles" then you will also love this novel. It's a similar story line, but focuses from a different point of view. I hope to read more mythology based novels from Pat Barker.

Mythological drama revisited - nicely done and original

The retelling of parts of the Trojan War seen through the eyes of Briseis is interesting and an original concept. The upshot is the lowly and pathetic role of women in ancient times as breeders and chattel. Achilles features greatly in this novel and, like most men, does not come out of it with much grace. For someone who already knew the story from an early love of Greek mythology, there are few surprises in the main story: it’s just the woman’s take on the tale which make the book different and interesting

Briseis of Lyrnessus is the teenage queen taken as Achilles’ trophy when his army destroys her town on their way to Troy, after he murders every male in her family—her husband, her father, her brothers, all brutally murdered in front of her. Every women is taken by the army and later distributed amongst the soldiers as spoils of war, with Briseis being given to Achilles, to whom she is expected to submit in every way. Later, there is an argument between Agamemnon and Achilles, which ends with Briseis being taken by Agamemnon as part of his winnings. Women, Pat Barker makes it clear in her new novel The Silence of the Girls, are nothing more than things men use to wield their power.


There have recently been a couple of books about Ancient Greek history written from a female point of view—Madeline Miller’s Circe, and now Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. Circe, which chronicles the life of its titular character, is very much about the gods and their egos. The Silence of the Girls, however, is very much about humans, their egos and their wars—both personal and political. The dirt and filth and disease and sheer brutal physicality of the Greek army marauding everything that stands in their way to Troy is very much Barker’s concern—there’s no magic here to ease the pain and trauma of rape or murder or even to help exact revenge. And while Achilles’ divine mother makes an appearance, and Apollo is beckoned by Briseis to bring about a plague, the gods remain on the peripheries of this story. There is no god in the machine to sort out situations with a thunderbolt here. There are only mortals, with all their flaws and ferocity and foolishness.

Mortal women in the Greek tales were rarely more than a wailing chorus or a beautiful body to be stolen away or fought over. The ones who survived were barely given a voice at all—something Pat Barker decides to challenge entirely in her take on The Iliad. We hear the women’s voices as they grieve, as they struggle, as they strive to live in whatever circumstances this war of men has forced upon them. Briseis and the other women the Greek army has collected are used as sex slaves, nurses, cleaners, cooks—it almost doesn’t matter what as, just that they are used endlessly by the very men who destroyed their families and homes, and that there is no way out for them. They are told repeatedly to remain silent, to submit to whatever comes their way because fighting against the inevitable rape and violence is futile. “And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do,” Briseis says, “I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.”

Not just are these women the trophies of war, their bodies traded back and forth, nothing more than economics, but they are also sometimes named as the causes of wars and arguments. Helen, secreted away as Troy falls to pieces, is said to be the cause for this great war—but is she really? Briseis, with no agency of her own, who becomes the cause for Achilles to refuse Agamemnon’s help and almost lose the war—she isn’t to blame for what the men around her use her to prove. Men’s egos are the cause for war; women are simply an excuse, maybe a catalyst at the most, but only one that is used by men to assuage their own fragile sense of masculinity and heroism.

Heroic behaviour, something the greatest of the Greeks are known for, isn’t anything admirable when viewed from the lens of the women they abuse. The “butcher” is what the women called Achilles, known by his men and historians as the great, the brilliant, the godlike. Even Patroclus, Achilles’ closest friend and right hand man in the war, who is the best of the men and may treat the women (especially Briseis) better than the other men do, cannot challenge the existing system—he’s just as much enmeshed in the terribly violent patriarchal culture of his time as the rest.


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While most of the narrative is told from Briseis’ point of view, Barker switches to Achilles as the story hurtles towards the end of the Trojan war. The great hero himself has moments where we see him not just as the butcher, but as a poet, a musician, a lover, a friend—for all his brutality, he too is a man broken by war, unable to find a way to live otherwise. In his relationship with Patroclus, in his treatment of Priam who comes to beg for his son’s body back, in his desperate need for and fears of abandonment regarding his mother, in the bravado he puts on for his men, we see him to be a complicated man torn asunder by two very different parts of his nature: perhaps whom he is intrinsically, and the hero he is mean to be. Toxic masculinity, Barker shows us, has always, always existed.

This is as much The Iliad from a female lens as it is a story reminding us of the patriarchal nature of all of history—it isn’t just written by the conquerers, it is written by men. But Barker is adamant that this must change. When Briseis is told to forget her past life, she immediately knows it is exactly what she must not, can not do: “So there was my duty laid out in front of me, as simple and clear as bowl of water: Remember.” She knows no one will want to record the reality of what went on during the war: “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?” But even so, Briseis, for all that she must bear, understands eventually that the women will leave behind a legacy, though not in the same vocal, violent way the men will.

“We’re going to survive,” she says, “our songs, our stories. They’ll never be able to forget us. Decades after the last man who fought at Tory 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.”

The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman--Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman watches and waits for the war's outcome: Briseis. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.
This was definitely a different book from my normal reads. It was interesting to a point, but that’s about it. I do love Greek mythology, but this one is on the fence.
**I voluntarily read and reviewed this book

I love a good historical read. This book made me reminisce about the movie "Troy" and I'll admit I did picture Brad Pitt as Achilles a time or two.

This story follows the events before the over taking of Troy. You are offered dueling sides of the story from Achilles and Briseis.

Through each side you are able to see how the other is struggling. How they are coping with their different stations in life and the changes that have come as of late. Brieis especially has to adapt to being a slave instead of a member of the royal family.

While I enjoyed the book a great deal, I was sad to see that there was nothing of the great Trojan Horse or Achilles actual demise. Those would have been great additions to an other wise amazing story.

Fictionalizing ancient stories and myths seems to be popular now. I have read a few of these novels, including The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s novel about the Trojan War. That novel focused on the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. Although The Silence of the Girls is also partially about them, it is from a point of view heretofore unexamined, that of the Trojan women taken as slaves by the Greeks during the war. It is narrated mostly by Briseis.

Depending upon how well you know your Iliad, you may remember that Briseis is the woman awarded to Achilles who is later taken away by Agamemnon when he is forced to give up Chryseis. It is Achilles’s forced forfeiture of Briseis that leads him to sulk in his tent while the other Greeks are being slaughtered.

The novel begins with the fall of the Trojan city Lyrnessus, of which Briseis is the young queen. Achilles is called “the butcher” by the Trojans, and the women wait in fear when the citadel falls, knowing their boys will be murdered along with the pregnant women, and girls as young as nine will be raped and enslaved. Briseis is awarded to Achilles, whom she hates and fears.

As the story of the war progresses, Barker builds a nuanced portrait of Achilles, his anger at Agamemnon, his Oedipal relationship with his goddess mother Thetis, his friendship with Patroclus. Although Achilles is not a sympathetic character, Briseis eventually becomes conflicted about him.

This is an interesting and affecting novel. It is completely unlike the only other novel I have read by Barker, but it makes me want to continue seeking out her books.

Telling the story of the Iliad through the eyes of Briseis is a really good idea, there's so much potential to present the familiar through a drastically different lens. As Barker (through Briseis) notes, there is a story of men and glory presented to the world, but the story that isn't told is one of rape and slavery. Ultimately, though, I didn't feel like The Silence of the Girls did enough to change the story.

At the end of the day, this book is the story of Achilles just from a different point of view. I felt like Barker could have done so much more, could have turned Achilles, Patroclus, Agamemnon, and the rest into side players. Instead, Briseis gives us a shift in perspective but no real shift in the story. In fact, she can't even remain the first person protagonist, the book starts to present a 3rd person perspective for Achilles about halfway through. I also detracted a few mental points because for a book that's about bringing a broader point of view to a traditional story, Barker dances around homoeroticism between Achilles and Patroclus without ever really laying out a deeper romantic or sexual relationship between them, which feels a little odd given all the other ways she wants to open up the story.

For me, it also suffered by comparison. I read The Song of Achilles just a month ago, which got me very excited to read this, but then Miller's book just kept returning to my mind while I read this. Miller's book does suffer from some of the same sins Barker is so determined to point out here: the rape and slavery of women so easily erased and overlooked. That we look at these men and do not fully judge them for their crimes because the worst of their crimes are not even discussed. But I felt like Miller's book had a stronger point of view and a stronger visceral and emotional connection to its story. I wanted that same kind of voice and emotion here, and there are certainly good reasons for why they shouldn't be compared (the ongoing traumas Briseis suffers make her a very different kind of narrator no matter what) but at the very least I'd recommend not reading the two close together.

I found this book interesting in that it provided a perspective to a story that I haven't read before. It was definitely something that I hadn't dug into before and was eye opening. The way these women's lives depended upon the good mood of these men was frustrating - I can't imagine how they even survived.

Overall, I found this to be an intriguing story and one that kept me turning the pages just to see what was going to happen.

This was a hard book to get through. There are many graphic scenes that me very uncomfortable. I did like Breseis, and I thought she was a strong character. This book is also very realistic and shows the horrors of the prisoners of war. I recommend this for fans of Greek mythology and the Iliad.

I loved this book! I thought it was such a refreshing perspective from the story of The Iliad, but told by Briseis. It gave me a new appreciation for the women of ancient stories who were merely background characters. There was an added depth to their plight and struggle. These women were slaves, most of them witnessed the slaughter of their family members by the hands of their captors. Although gruesome, I appreciated the reality of the story. Also, the authors writing style was beautiful!

It’s Pat Barker. So it’s going to be an intelligent, female-centered, perceptive work of fiction. But in her long career this writer has moved between superlative (The Regeneration Trilogy) and more moderately successful writing. This new novel belongs in the latter group. It seems mainly to be the story of Achilles, told mostly from the perspective of an upper class Greek woman captured in battle to become his slave - though some chapters veer, without explanation (other than authorial necessity] into the third person. And the story deviates in places from the real (bodies that reconstitute overnight) and the mythological (no Trojan horse, for example). Nevertheless it’s compelling enough, without really touching emotional depths. And its other major shortcoming is that, despite a female narrator and some secondary female characters, it’s not really the women’s story at all.

"We need a new song.”

Barker does not shy away from the vulgarity of ancient warfare and the plight of slaves, particularly female slaves whose rape was considered part of victory. The dehumanization process and the loss of individuality really shines through in this book. It's less about the action happening around Briseis as it is about her mental process of dealing with what she's forced into. So yes, this book takes place during a war but don't expect an action-packed ride and the novel is better for that.

I appreciated that Briseis reads much like an actual woman, not a fiery historical fiction heroine that books such as this can fall into. She's a real person who confronts truly horrifying things in a way that's believable and heartfelt. I wish we would've heard more from the other women though; I think some of the supporting female characters could've added an interesting perspective to it all.

I only had two qualms. One was I actually didn't enjoy the reading the point-of-view of Achilles. Patroclus was better in my opinion because, considering his past, he did have something to offer the story's theme. But Achilles, considering his treatment of the protagonist, wasn't someone I wanted to hear from. I would've rather gleaned the information he gave from his interactions with the other characters than hear it in his own voice.

My second issue was the dialogue sometimes seemed much too contemporary. I would've liked it to be more old-fashioned just for the sake of helping me as the reader stay within the world of the book more instead of reading lines I could see in a contemporary adult fiction novel.

I liked the book, despite my issues and a couple lagging parts here and there. Briseis is a character worth reading as anyone, regardless of their gender, has something to learn from her story.

Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Doubleday Books, and the author Pat Barker for the opportunity to do so.

Told from the perspective of a Trojan female slave claimed by Achilles, Barker' s novel does not romanticize the plight of women of war. Rape camps, abuse, plundering, surround the story of Achilles and his mythology. Well written and imagined, familiar yet fresh.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley