Many of us were required, at some point in our education, to read at least pieces of The Iliad. Set near the end of the Trojan War, it tells the story of the falling out between Achilles, the greatest warrior among the Greeks, and the leader of the Greek army, Agamemnon, which threatened the Greeks with defeat because Achilles refused to continue to fight. The source of that quarrel between the men? A woman, Briseis, taken captive during a raid on her Trojan-allied city and chosen by Achilles as his prize. When Agamemnon laid claim to her instead, and took her from Achilles, that's when the drama went down. Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls explores what it might have been like to be Briseis, or any of the other girls and women enslaved by conquering troops, as the Trojan War turned their worlds upside down.

From the beginning of the book, when her city is being raided, when he kills her brothers, Briseis hates Achilles. This does not change when she's given to him as his reward for valor, but she knows her hatred doesn't matter. She'll be expected to serve at his table and be used in his bed anyways. She has nowhere to run, and they both know it. Although deeply unhappy, she becomes accustomed to her routine with Achilles, becoming close to Patroclus and his slave girl, as well as the other women of the camp...from whom she hears tales of Agamemnon's cruelty. She's terrified when he takes her, though he mostly ignores her, and not particularly happy to be returned to Achilles when she eventually is. It's not a pleasant lot, to be an object, a bargaining chip, instead of a person

Dehumanization, the way it crushes the spirit, is the central theme of the novel. Briseis goes from being a queen in her own right to no more than chattel. The injustice of being expected to serve as a sex object for the men who killed your loved ones and destroyed everything you once held dear is a note struck consistently throughout, though Barker does a good job of keeping it from being the only note or making it feel unduly repetitive. She portrays a range of experiences through the camp women, from those beaten and abused by their captors to those who do their best to work into the good graces of the men who keep them, including by bearing their children. I appreciated that Barker did not fall into the common trap of historical fiction around young women...so often they're written as anachronistically defiant and spunky, but Briseis and her fellow captives feel grounded in reality. Barker doesn't engage in any sort of rhetorical flashiness; rather, the book is an elegant plea to consider the historical voices that we've never gotten to hear.

The lack of flash, though, also works against the book. It's rooted in traumatizing experiences, and if I'm being honest, the lack of a big personality for Briseis or much in the way of hope for her can make it feel like a slog. I imagine this explains why the narrative occasionally leaves the first-person perspective of Briseis and engages in third-person narration of Achilles and Patroclus instead, to try to break out of the rut of Briseis's despair. I don't think it really works...in a novel otherwise focused on giving the viewpoint of the forgotten, focusing on the star characters of the familiar narrative doesn't add anything. It certainly doesn't do anything new or particularly interesting with these characters, leaving their bond open to interpretation. The Silence of the Girls, while certainly not a waste of time, doesn't really enlighten or entertain, so I can't give it an unqualified recommendation.

"Oh, these fierce young women."

The Silence of the Girls is a powerful, moving story about fates of Briseis and other Trojan women during and after the Trojan War. This book has a strong, gripping start that made me excited to read it, but unfortunately the latter half seemed to lose its steam and instead left me wanting for more.

Briseis acts as our narrator for a majority of the book, thought there are a chapters interspersed infrequently (moreso in the latter half) that are told from a third person perspective and focused more on Achilles. Briseis is an admirable character and I was glad to be able to follow her experience as Achille's 'prize.' It was interesting to watch as she learned how to navigate her new circumstances and handle her feelings towards her captors and the other Trojan women with her. There was a sense of camaraderie among the women, but there was just a big a sense of survival that seemed to separate them at times and made life as slaves even more lonesome. Briseis' anger is also evident throughout all parts of her narration, however, and it is infectious in making the reader angry for her and her people as well, though I appreciated seeing Briseis struggle with her feelings towards her captors at times--it wasn't always black and white.

There were a lot of themes explored in this book that I appreciated immensely, the main ones, of course, relating to how poorly women were treated and how they were simply viewed as an object or prize to be won, rather than viewed as a person themselves. There is also a strong theme of survival present throughout, in which the women must really look out for themselves, both mentally and physically, as they had to adapt to their new positions. Pride and friendship are also big themes that show in various places, not only among the women but also between Patroclus, Achilles, Agamemnon, and other figures in the story.

I also thought that Barker did a great job of creating an authentic Ancient Greek and war camp setting that really relayed the experience of the Trojan War, or rather, any war that took place in ancient times. There was a constant sense of frustration, distaste, both of which even lent themselves to the constant 'male' desire to simple conquer, win, and reap prizes. She did wonderful work of showcasing Greek customs and rituals, from meal-serving etiquette to sacrificial customs to battle and so much more--this was a component that I felt Barker executed excellently.

There were a lot of things that I felt this book was lacking. For one, I was under the impression from the synopsis and other advertisements that this book would focus on Briseis and the other Trojan women, and although it did technically do this, Briseis and Achilles really seemed to be our main focus. The other Trojan women were mentioned, but it was always rather brief. The end of the book did bring up more discussion of the other women, however, that I appreciated, but I do wish there had been more throughout the story. Another thing I found lacking was any real connections to any characters. I felt invested in Briseis and Achilles' storylines, but there was also a bit of a boundary that kept me from really engaging with them and wanting to know more about their stories. Patroclus and Iphis were probably the most interesting out of the bunch, but they were not quite the main focus of the story.

Another minor quibble I have that isn't a huge deal and won't affect my rating--but that was still a minor annoyance and I know may bother others--was the way in which the characters talked. I understand that authors aren't going to choose to write in a style of speech that is one hundred percent authentic, but some of the phrases, words used, or style of speech were simply too casual and modern and completely pulled me out of the Ancient Greek setting.

I'm not entirely sure how to rate this book. The story was interesting and the first half of the book was great, but after some of the larger events took place, I simply started losing interest. I was suddenly bored and uninterested in what was happening and was almost wishing for the story to end. I've read a lot of historical fiction set in Ancient Greece or meant to retell Greek mythology stories and I've found that they are largely hit or miss, and most of them end up missing the mark. I wish I could give The Silence of the Girls a higher rating, but for now I am settling on 3.75 stars. This may change, but for now I feel that I was just too bored near the end to bump this up to a full four stars.

*eARC kindly provided by Doubleday Books via NetGalley*

CW: suicide, rape/sexual assault

For a book supposedly about Briseis, it sure seemed more about Achilles than anything else. And I get it. She's part of his life, part of his story, part of his world. She's his slave! But the problem is, Briseis wanted to be more than that. And she deserved more than that. Like, I understand that there weren't a whole lot of options for her back then, in the aftermath of a tragic war that left both sides reeling. No one was left untouched to the pain and grief, to the ugliness of humanity. This book is very hard on the reader, because it explores all of it, and in a way that didn't feel sensationalized. It just was. And it gave voice to the women who were forgotten, who were discarded and abused, who were part of a game that they never asked for. I just expected more from Briseis's story. Also, the language sometimes felt too modern for the time, and it pulled me out every so often. I did love how this didn't shy away from the darker aspects, but I was very underwhelmed with the ending.
Women are, after all, renowned for their devotion to the gods.

RATING: 3 Paw Prints!

The Silence of the Girls is referred to as a masterpiece in its synopsis. Yes, it is absolutely a stunning masterpiece.

For over 10 years, the city of Troy has been under siege and in battle over Helen, a woman who can observe the war high atop a parapet within the city walls.

Another woman, Briseis, a former queen of a neighboring kingdom, has been captured by and lives in servitude of the man who murdered her husband and brothers, Achilles.

Agamemnon is the leader of all the Greeks, and he demands Briseis to be his, but not without consequences. Achilles, the top fighter for the Greeks, refuses to return to battle. As a result, the Greeks quickly lose ground in their siege on Troy.

Briseis’ voice is powerful. She speaks for herself but also for all of the thousands of hidden women involved in this war.

Pat Barker re-weaves a classic where women are present (not invisible), where they find strength among each other (and are not weak), and where they are depicted as living, breathing humans with opinions and emotions.

The writing is precise and glorious. While you may “know” some of these characters from popular Greek mythology, Briseis’ perspective and Barker’s rich storytelling combine in a way that each character is robust and complex in ways not depicted before.

Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a study on war and its indelibly human impact as told by a resilient and brave (mythological) woman.

Thank you to Doubleday for the complimentary ARC. All opinions are my own.

Toward the end of Pat Barker’s newest novel, her main character Briseis thinks to herself: “Yes, the death of young men in battle is a tragedy . . . worthy of any number of laments — but theirs is not the worst fate. I looked at Andromache, who’d have to live the rest of her amputated life as a slave, and I thought: We need a new song.” The eloquently powerful The Silence of the Girls is Barker’s attempt to create just that, and she just about nails it.

Barker’s novel is a re-telling of Homer’s The Iliad, told mostly from the point of view of Briseis, the young girl taken by Achilles as a spoil of war and then later taken from him by Agamemnon as compensation for having to give up his own “prize” when her priest-father calls down the anger of Apollo on the Greek soldiers. Barker begins with in the harrowing moments before the Greeks sack Briseis’ city, and she is paraded out like a horse for Achille’s judgment (“Cheers, lads. She’ll do.”). The story then takes the reader through the big points of the Iliad: the spat with Agamemnon, Achilles sulking in his tent, Patroclus donning Achille’s armor and driving the Trojans back before being killed by Hector, Achilles’ grief and subsequent vengeance on not just Hector but Hector’s corpse, the pleading of Priam for his son’s body, Achilles’ acquiescence, and Achille’s eventual death and its impact on Briseis.

The focus in The Silence of the Girls is not on the war itself — there are no big battle scenes and only a few moments of actual description of the war. Most of it comes to the reader as it does to Briseis: “the sound of battle, clamorous at first, moved steadily further away until, by mid-afternoon, it was no more than a muffled clash on the horizon.” Instead Barker focuses on the quieter moments between individuals, especially the women who, as the above quote notes, are often the more grievous and most overlooked casualties of warfare.

The terror of war for women begins, as noted, immediately. After the Greeks storm her city, Briseis watches as a woman is casually “raped repeatedly by a gang of men who were sharing a wine jug, passing it good-naturedly from hand to hand while waiting their turn.” Adding to the horror of the moment is that as she’s raped the woman is constantly reaching out and calling to her two sons, “twelve, thirteen years old perhaps [who] lay wounded an dying a few yards away from her.” When the footfalls of the Greeks could be heard approaching their tower chamber, Briseis’ cousin Arianna chooses to leap to her death rather than face the inevitable.

Briseis herself considers suicide later, once she’s become Achilles’ “bed-mate.” Achilles himself is a cypher, a man that can fly into rages and violence but who also can be smoothly civil, though he spends most of the novel barely speaking to Briseis or even acknowledging her presence outside of the bedroom. His companion-lover (Barker leaves it up in the air which) Patroclus is different, treating Briseis with compassion and kindness and taking the time to speak to her regularly when Achilles is not around. The only people Briseis feels she can truly confide in though are the other women, divvied up amongst the Greeks. In a few scattered moments of gathering food or doing laundry, they share their stories, no longer bound by the rule that “silence becomes a woman.”

The different ways men and women move in the world are remarked upon again and again. When Briseis listens to the soldiers’ songs of “deathless glory” she recalls how she heard those same songs in her childhood and “thought all the stirring tales of courage and adventure were opening a door into my own future, thought a few years later . . . the world began to close in around me and I realized the songs belonged to my brothers, not to me.”

Barker makes no pretense of unrealistic agency for Briseis, living in an enclosed camp surrounded by soldiers and bound to a man known as “the butcher” by his foes. There’s no planning of a mass escape, no attempt to assassinate the Greek leaders, no staunch defiance against servitude and rape. She watches Achilles she tells us not “like a hawk” but “like a mouse.” And when Patroclus suggests he could convince Achilles to marry her, in her internal debate she asks if she really could marry “the man who killed your brothers, “deciding quickly yes, because, “first of all, I wouldn’t have been given a choice . . . [and] a slave will do anything, anything at all, to top being a thing and become a person again.”

Unfortunately, her life is upturned again when Agamemnon, forced by the Greeks to give up his slave-girl Chriseis, chooses to humiliate Achilles by taking Briseis from him. Achilles’ subsequent rage and refusal to fight has nothing to do with his feelings for Briseis and all to do with the insult to his pride, especially from a man whom he despises (Agamemnon is portrayed mostly as an incompetent, drunken lout of a general, mocked by the women as being a “back-door man.”)

Despite the realities of her position, though, as the final year of the war advances, Briseis carves out a sort of stuttering, restless peace with it, via her female companions, Patroclus’ kindness, and her learning how to be a war-time nurse by helping out in the field hospital: “I loved the work, I loved everything about it . .. I lost myself in that work — and I found myself too.”

It’s just a bit before this point that Barker has started to offer up a POV from Achilles’ perspective. Here we see him contemplating his own violence, as when at times he feels strangely detached from his own hands, permanently stained with blood. We also get his perspective on the choice he was granted —a long life of mundanity or a short life of glory —, what he thought of his mother (the sea goddess Thetis), how Patroclus became his dearest intimate, and finally, we see into the all-encompassing grief and fury that overtake him at Patroclus’ death.

The Silence of the Girls gains weight and gravity as it continues. At one point toward the latter third Briseis offers up the typical Homeric catalog of deaths, those Achilles killed in battle as he attempts to avenge Patroclus. But partway through she stops and asks, “But you see the problem, don’t you? How on earth can you feel any pity or concern confronted by this list of intolerably nameless names?” And so, she slows the narrative to tell us how some snippets of the victims’ lives, bit of humanizing detail garnered from their mothers and sisters. How Mulius, “the one with Achilles’ spear point sticking out of his ear,” as a baby “never crawled, never shuffled around on his bum or anything like that, just straight stood up.” Or how Iphition, the first time his father took him fishing, could never get the worm to stay on the hook, “But give him his due, he went on trying. He was like that — he wouldn’t give in.” The section is poignantly heart-breaking even as it offers up sharp criticism of the usual portrayal of war.

The novel comes into its strongest section when Priam appears. His plea to Achilles creates a constant tension and urgency as even when he is speaking gently to the old king, Achilles, as Briseis notices, is always just one small step from killing him in rage. Tension also swirls around how the war itself might tip one way or the other as these two leaders meet. Meanwhile, the “relationship” — an exaggerated description but I can’t think of a better word — between Achilles and Briseis also comes to a pivotal point here as well. While the language takes more of a turn toward the lyrical toward the end of the novel, Barker still shows a deft hand in her use of blunt vocabulary. As when, for instance, Priam announces “I do what no man before me has ever done. I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.” Barker gives us a moment to feel the agony and horror of that moment, but then turns the focus yet again away from the men to the women, as Briseis, looking on, thinks, “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.”

This is Briseis’ story after all, and so it is right she get the last word in that scene, but extricating herself from the world and narratives of men is not easy, and Briseis gives voice to that in meta-commentary throughout: Looking back, it seemed to me I’d been trying to escape not just from the camp, but from Achilles’ story; and I’d failed.” Whether that opinion still holds at the end I’ll leave to the reader.

My only criticism of The Silence of the Girls is that at times Barker drops into a surprisingly jarring modern vernacular, having soldiers refer to breasts as “knockers,” for instance, or referring to “the weekend,” (which I’m pretty sure didn’t exist back then). One doesn’t therefore feel quite as steeped in antiquity as one does in Madeline Miller’s fantastic Circe (also highly recommended and a book that would make a great companion novel to this one). But those moments are relatively few and easily passed over in a book that sheds such a new light on an old story. Achilles might be the hero of The Iliad, and his voice even in this novel is, as Briseis says, “always so dominant,” but like Briseis, for the reader, “it will be the girls I remember most.” Highly recommended.

I was disappointed in the writing and the narration. I think compared to Circe was a phenomenal book and this one tried to be a feminine perspective on war but was a weak storyline and the narrative voices were stilted and underwhelming. I wanted to like this feminine perspective but the lack of linear plot and the whiny Achilles voice was not compelling.

The Silence of the Girls is such a great title for this novel, because this is a story about men. The girls truly are silent—they’re barely there!

Achilles is the star of the show. He is by far the most fleshed out character—maybe the only fleshed out character, actually. We get his whole story, beginning to end, in great detail. Why and how he does things, what makes him happy, what makes him sad, his relationships to the other characters, we know it all. As our main character, supposedly, Briseis is passive. She watches and listens and waits. Which is probably what a woman in her situation would do, sure, but she didn’t even feel like a character. She’s a narrator for Achilles and Patroclus, little else. Other women are present in the story, but they don’t get much beyond a line of dialogue here and there. Occasionally, Briseis will think to herself about how much she loves these women, but we rarely see the interactions that formed her friendships.

Reading the synopsis, I thought this would be a story about Briseis and the other women in the camp, with minor cameos by Achilles and Patroclus. But it’s the other way around, and that’s so disappointing.

Story-wise, not a lot happens. Sometimes there’s a battle in the distance? It’s mostly Briseis watching and learning about Achilles, serving Achilles, getting raped by Achilles, and taking walks along the beach (oh, don’t worry, Achilles is usually there). Every once in awhile, Briseis will switch things up and talk to Patroclus instead! And boy howdy, do things get exciting then, because now we get to read about Briseis talking to Patroclus about Achilles!

I thought the dialogue and language used was jarring. I didn’t expect the characters to speak Greek, of course, but words like “sorry,” “hospital,” and “c’mon” (not to mention the modern nouns for sexual body parts) felt so out of place. Had Barker used “apologies” or “medical tent” instead I likely wouldn’t have noticed, honestly. I will say, however, that as a result of Barker’s contemporary language and shallow characterization, this was an easy read. (Also, did anyone else think Barker seemed repeatedly fatphobic in her descriptions of Tecmessa?)

Pat Barker's story of the fall of Troy provides a fascinating look at the life of a woman trapped in a man's story. And make no mistake--this is Achilles story, we're just hearing it from a new perspective. As they say, history is written by the winners, but Barker does a solid job of articulating the views of the losing side.

The novel opens with the Greeks about the breach the walls of one of the small cities surrounding Troy. We meet our main character Briseis, the queen of this city, as she joins the other women in the citadel to await the inevitable destruction of their home and enslavement. Briseis is strangely calm throughout all of this, and remains so for the majority of the novel. While this is a somewhat believable reaction--shock an all that--it doesn't always make for the most compelling reading. After the capture of the women, Briseis is given to Achilles as his war prize and things roll along from there.

Achilles, along with Agamemnon, is the main "villain" of this story. Achilles is brutal, efficient, and concerned mainly with feasting and killing. And of course Patroclus. While his relationship with Achilles is never made explicit, its clear they have a bond that goes far beyond friendship. Briseis is our window into the main events of the Greek occupation and between all the weaving and wine pouring, some genuinely interesting things happen. There's plague and appeals to the gods, slights to honor and a rotating cast of famous faces. Ajax, Odysseus, Helen, Paris, Hector, all get their page time in, but always through the lens of Briseis. Helen in particular comes across as a complex character and it's interesting to see the darker side of these men we usually see as heroes. Ajax is clearly suffering from severe PTSD, Odysseus is a calculating sneak no matter who's side he's on, Agamemnon is a fat, cowardly jerk, Achilles is a passionless killing machine (at least in the first half).

By the second half of the novel this all starts to change. Achilles is insulted by Agamemnon when Agamemnon takes Briseis from him and so he refuses to fight. Barker starts to include chapters from Achilles perspective and he is by far the most compelling character. He is a man torn between honor and duty, his destiny and his mortality. When Patroclus is killed by Hector while impersonating Achilles, the emotional fallout is dramatic and makes for some of the most interesting chapters in the whole book. Unfortunately by this point Breiseis has largely been sidelined and I have to say I didn't miss her much. Breiseis is a heroine severely lacking in spunk, or pride, or righteous fury. She mostly goes through the motions and accepts what fate throws at her. Again this is all understandable and probably the whole point Barker is trying to make. What can she do? She's a woman and a slave in Ancient Greece. Any attempt at rebellion and they'll just kill her. All the women in this book are left trying to make the best of the worst possible situation while remaining powerless and generally forgotten. Things generally work out in the end--as well as things can be expected to work out. Achilles is dead, Troy has fallen, and Breseis is "free" (in a way) to make a new story for herself.

Overall a decent read in my opinion. If you're expecting feminist vindication, you'll probably be disappointed. Or maybe not, depending on your definition of feminist vindication. If you're looking for an interesting retelling of a major historical event and humanized versions of ancient heroes this will probably suit you just fine.

Last week as I read The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker I found it impossible to separate its story form that of The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. I read The Song of Achilles less than four months ago and it remained vivid in my mind. These novels are each retellings of The Iliad, but from different perspectives. As such they have much, much in common. Because I read them so close together, neither will ever be able to stand completely alone for me and that’s okay. Today, I’m happy to share a bit about both books including how very much I enjoyed them.

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

As The Silence of the Girls opens, the kingdom of Lyrnessus is under siege by “the butcher” and his army. The men slaughtered, the riches plundered, the women taken for slaves and bedmates. We see the harsh realities of war through the eyes and voice of Briseis, beautiful, young wife to the slain king. Awarded to Achilles as a prize for his victory, this is her story, that of a woman surviving amidst the trappings of a war thrust on her by men.

The Song of Achilles starts further back, when Achilles and Patroclus were boys growing up together under the watchful eye of Achilles’ father. It’s the story of the relationship between the two men from boyhood through the long Trojan War. At its core, The Song of Achilles is a love story with Briseis appearing midway through after becoming Achilles’ prize. She becomes almost a friend to Patroclus and a witness to the devotion he and Achilles share.

As Briseis told her own story in The Silence of the Girls, I saw Achilles in a much different light than I had in The Song of Achilles. In her story he was a man to be feared both on and off the battlefield. Being little more than a concubine, Briseis had no voice, no hope. Her life was a casualty of the whims of arrogant men. But, even as I read her story, I couldn’t help but think of Achilles and Patroclus from The Song of Achilles and attach the sympathy and compassion I felt for them there. Song took the edge off the blood thirsty warrior.

Being retellings of The Iliad, the personal conflict between Agamemnon (leader of the Greek army) and Achilles (its greatest fighter) took center stage in both books. Accurate to the original, the two men dug in, refusing to let go of their pride, while everyone around them paid the price. In Song, my allegiance could not help but go to Achilles, whereas in Silence my sympathies fell solely with Briseis. Yet in both, the argument at the heart of The Iliad, captivated my attention and kept me up late into the night.

Had you asked me six months ago if I was a fan of Greek mythology, you’d have heard a resounding “NO!” Circe by Madeline Miller (my review) quickly changed my mind. I’ve now read three retellings this year and thoroughly enjoyed them all. My admiration goes to both Barker and Miller for putting a fresh edge on very, very old tales, bringing them back to life for all of us. I know I’ll definitely read more and look forward to doing so.

So, do I recommend both books? Yes! Each shines for its own reasons and though the books arose from the same epic poem, they are their own stories. If like me, you’ve already read The Song of Achilles, keep in mind your biases from it as you read The Silence of the Girls. I guarantee it won’t feel like a reread. If you’ve not read either book, I’d start with The Silence of the Girls. I think it would be ideal to get a woman’s view of Achilles and his flaws, his hubris from Briseis and then turn to The Song of Achilles where you learn more about what might have made him the man he was. Seriously, you can’t lose with either book!

Note: I received a copy of The Silence of the Girls from the publisher, Doubleday, (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review. Thank you!

Retelling the stories and reframing the characters in ancient myths and tragedies is as old as literature itself. Indeed, many of the most famous versions of the myths and plays are not the urtext edition, but are re-tellings themselves, and some of our most famous pieces of modern literature — James Joyce’s Ulysses first and foremost in my mind — continue the trend.

This hasn’t slowed down at all in the recent past as novelists, young and well seasoned, approach these masterworks and explore interesting new perspectives. Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, which looks at the story of the Odyssey from the perspective of Penelope and her chorus of maids (who were hanged at the end of the epic poem), comes to mind. As does Madeline Miller’s debut novel The Song of Achilles, an intimate portrait of the love between Achilles and Patroclus, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Just earlier this year Miller’s second novel, Circe, which, well, reframes the story of the witch Circe from the Odyssey, was published. Last year Colm Tóibín published House of Names, his retelling of Aeschylus’s Oresteia (itself a retelling); and Kamila Shamsie published Home Fire, and Natalie Haynes published Children of Jocasta, each a re-telling of Sophocles’ Antigone (which is, again, a retelling; and, by the way, Eurypides also wrote a play called Atigone at around the same time as Sophocles; it’s now lost, but we know that their approaches were very different).

These old stories are endlessly rich! I hope there are many more reworkings (and, of course, there will be), particularly if some of our finest writers drink from this endless font to explore humanity. And that’s how I feel about Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a startlingly powerful book that retells (or does it tell for the first time?) the story, from her own point of view (mostly), of Briseis, the other woman at the center of the battles of masculine will in the Iliad.

The Greeks waged war on the Trojans because, famously, Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the Greek king of Sparta. Menelaus, with the help of his strong-willed brother Agamemnon, the Greek King of Mycenae, called many other Greek kings and armies to travel across the water and punish Troy for Paris’s humiliating act.

Homer’s Iliad focuses on one particular period late in this long war: the quarrel between Agamemnon and the most famous Greek warrior Achilles. What — well, whom — were they fighting over? Briseis, a former Trojan queen turned captive concubine when her own city was sacked by Achilles earlier in the war. This is where Barker begins The Silence of the Girls. Famous for her vivid Regeneration trilogy of novels set during World War I, Barker evokes the muses again and conveys the horrific, violent, and terrifying events that lead to Briseis’s capture. Here is how her books begins:

"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.'”

We are soon with Briseis, running to the citadel once the walls of her city are breached. There, with the other women and girls, she looks out the window and watches fathers and brothers and friends get massacred in the street. When it’s clearly hopeless and the Greeks are just cleaning up the streets of any living man or boy, when those Greeks start lustily glancing at the citadel, Briseis watches some of the women around her jump from the windows to avoid slavery.

While I’ve always known Briseis wasn’t always a slave, the pages of the Iliad don’t really give her a lot of life. Somehow we know she was a queen subsequently brought into slavery, but the prevailing story is that of Achilles, the hero, flawed hero, sure, but the hero nonetheless. The same man occupies the pages of The Silence of the Girls, but here his tale is subverted by an innocent woman’s rape and enslavement.

As the Greeks approach the citadel, Briseis looks around and sees that her situation in life is about to change entirely. She’s already seen her family and husband killed by Achilles and his myrmidons, but she recognizes further changes. These are encapsulated in a passage where she looks at Ismene. Ismene is Briseis’s husband’s concubine. Yes, Briseis acknowledges that she herself has slaves as she realizes she’s about to become a slave herself. She looks at Ismene, “who was four months pregnant with my husband’s child, pressing her hands hard into her stomach, trying to convince herself the pregnancy didn’t show,” and Briseis reflects:

"In the past few days, I’d often seen her looking at me — Ismene, who’d once been so careful never to meet my eyes — and her expression had said, more clearly than any words: It’s your turn now. Let’s see how you like it. It hurt, that brash, unblinking stare. I came from a family where slaves were treated kindly and when my father fave me in marriage to Mynes, the kind, I carried on the tradition in my own home. I’d been kind to Ismene — or I thought I had, but perhaps no kindness was possible between owner and slave, only varying degrees of brutality? I looked across the room at Ismene and thought: Yes, you’re right. My turn now."

Not all of Briseis’s accounts of these times are clear. Importantly, Barker does not simply retell the events of the war; she gets into the psychological experience, richly imagined and rendered wonderfully, horribly. Briseis recognizes this uncomfortable thought: “A slave isn’t a person who’s being treated as a thing. A slave is a thing, as much in her own estimation as in anybody else’s.” And so, along with the loss of her family, Briseis has also lost her own identity, not just to others but also to herself. Barker presents this in the prose. We feel Briseis numbly, hazily passing the time, noting a part of her died when Achilles took her as his “prize of honour.”

"I lay there, hating him, though of course he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t have the perfect right to do. If his prize of honour had been the armour of a great lord he wouldn’t have rested till he’d tried it out: lifted the shield, picked up the sword, assessed its length and weight, slashed it a few times through the air. That’s what he did to me. He tried me out."

And so this former queen becomes something entirely different, “living in a bubble, no past, no future, only an endless repetition of now and now and now.”

These early chapters are very strong and set up the conflicts Briseis must navigate later in the story when she has to decide just how to survive. Does she try to run to Troy? Even if she succeeds, what will happen when the Trojan walls falls and she’s forced to relive her capture? Does she accept the kindness of some of the Greeks, like Patroclus, who, we know, isn’t long for this world? Does she allow herself to care at all for Achilles and use her relationship with him to regain some stability? And what when she finds herself at the center of the dispute between him and the crude, cruel, unspeakably vile Agamemnon, who takes her as his own to spite Achilles? As an aside, Barker’s portrayal of Agamemnon, a petty but powerful king who would kill his own daughter to bring about this war with Troy, is one of the most believable I’ve read. For all of his promises that he didn’t sleep with Briseis, I’ve never believed it in the other tellings. Here, though, Barker again understands the psychology of these brutal, selfish, prideful men well enough to know Agamemnon can say that he didn’t sleep with Briseis as a man does with his wife and be technically correct, while at the same time both hiding and projecting what that means he actually did to her. I think Barker handles all of this perfectly and in a way that I came away with new, feasible portraits of these events.

There was one aspect of The Silence of the Girls that I can’t quite get behind though. Throughout, Briseis, and through her Barker, is aware of whose story this is and whose it isn’t as it goes into history. Briseis says, as an example:

"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. Here I was, again, waiting for Achilles to decide when it was time for bed, still trapped, still stuck inside his story, and yet with no real part to play in it."

While Barker does a fantastic job making this untrue, giving us Briseis’s story in a way that feels real and true to history, Barker strangely abandons Briseis’s first-person narrative at times to focus on Achilles. In fact, as the book goes on and there is more and more drama between Achilles and the other men, Briseis disappears from the page with increased frequency. Is Barker showing how easy it is to lose this woman’s story? Or is she succumbing to the drama inherent in the men’s battle of wills? I kept hoping it was the former, that somehow the authorial act of abandoning Briseis would underscore and deepen the themes of the novel. In the end, though, I couldn’t help but think these portions of the book subverted those themes.

I don’t want it to sound like I think Barker dropped the ball and flubbed the whole book. This is a quibble given how much I value the book as a whole. It’s important, I think, and I hope many discover it and enrich their appreciation of this old story, which says so much about humanity, especially in a time when minority and historically oppressed groups are trying to reclaim their stories. Thanks to Barker, Briseis is more real than ever, and she’s concerned about what we think of this old mess:

"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."

Whether you began your study of myth with Mircea Eliade’s "Myth and Reality" or Ovid’s "Metamorphoses," you are  thrilled by Homer, the Greek tragedians, Virgil, and Seneca.

Writers and artists have recast the myths for centuries:  indeed, there seems to be a Myth-of-the-Month club among novelists. Last year we had Colm Toibin’s "House of Names," a competent retelling of the "Oresteia," and David Vann’s "Bright Air Black," a retelling of "Medea" (on my TBR). This year we’ve seen Zachary Mason’s "Metamorphica," an anthology of reimagined myths with allusions to Ovid (clever but uneven), Will Boast’s "Daphne" (Y.A.-ish), and Orange Prize winner Madeline Miller’s popular "Circe" (currently 50% off at Barnes and Noble, by the way).

And now the Booker Prize-winning Pat Barker has joined their ranks with "The Silence of the Girls,' a brilliant retelling of the Iliad from a woman’s perspective.  The narrator is Briseis, Achilles’ intelligent captive mistress, formerly a princess. But some scenes are shown from Achilles’s  point-of-view, narrated in the third person.

It begins with Briseis’s derisive musings on the epithets associated with Achilles:

"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.'"

Before her city fell to the Greeks—a city near Troy—Briseis was the wife of King Mynes. Now she is Achilles’s prize, and serves him dinner and has sex with him.  (At least he’s quick.)

Another slave, Chyrseis, the daughter of a priest of Apollo, suffers horribly as the prize of Agamemnon, a rapist. When Agamemnon is forced to return Chryseis to her father,  he decides to snatch another prize and takes Briseis from Achilles.   And so Achilles sulks in his tent and refuses to fight, and Briseis often sees him running on the beach in full armor.  But as the Greeks lose ground and hundreds die, the selfishness of the rage of Achilles becomes more apparent to Briseis, who cares for the wounded and dying every day in the hospital tent.

Finally Achilles goes back to war, after the death of his best friend Patroclus, who dressed in Achilles’ armor on the battlefield and got himself killed.  We are sorry for Patroclus, a good friend of Briseis, but Briseis’s sharp observations on the pointless war and the silent sufferings of women are the mainspring of the novel.  Briseis has no control over her fate, even when she returns to Achilles, though they do become friends.

Near the end, Briseis’s bitter observations of the Trojan War resonate. Barker writes,

"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."

A remarkable, lucid and disturbing novel.  I can’t predict these things, but perhaps it is a modern classic.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Along with Madeline Miller’s Circe - The Silence of the Girls has now become one of my best reads of 2018.

This is a retelling of the final weeks of The Iliad from the point of view of Briseis - once a queen and now a bed slave. It is a retelling from the women’s perspective with none of the brutality and mistreatment of women hidden by the valor of the men present. The Silence of the Girls is not an easy read - and I found myself tearing up at many places, but it a necessary one. Just like Circe - it shows us the struggle and the mistreatment of women through history. Yes Briseis is still a woman of her time and maybe she does not uphold the modern ideas of feminism - her own suffering and voice still deserves to be heard and respected. Barker has an incredible talent depicting trauma (as prevalent in her other work) and you can really feel that here.

In the last third of the book - the narration and perspective change. It shifts from first person to third person, encompassing the events of the fall of Troy. It also gives us, the readers, the insight into the male psyche and how they view the conflict. I believe, that this makes for even a stronger novel. It did not take me out of the moment, and some may say we have too many male perspective books on The Iliad. However, in order to understand something, you must view it from all angles and sides. This is the strength of Barker’s novel. It lets the reader make their own conclusion.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction, strong female characters, classical retellings and loves Barker’s previous work. Oh and anyone who loved Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe.

“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.”

I received a free e-ARC through NetGalley from the publishers at Doubleday. Trigger warnings: rape, death, child death, slavery, violence.

The Silence of the Girls is the story of the Trojan war told from the perspective of Briseis, a queen turned slave when the Greeks raid her city. She’s given to Achilles as a prize, no more human than stacks of gold or fine cloth. When a plague forces Agamemnon to give up his own slave girl, he demands Briseis in her place. This is not a love story, or even a story of war, glory, and heroes. This is the Trojan war told by the girls in the margins, where the Greeks are invaders at best and monsters and brutes at worst.

I wanted to like this more because I love the idea of telling the story of the Trojan war through the voices that are usually silenced. Mythology (and history) has a tendency to gloss over the nastier aspects of ancient Greek warfare, including the forced slavery and rape of the conquered women and the absolute decimation of the male population, even the babies and children. It’s an ambitious story Barker has set herself up to tell, and she isn’t quite up to the task. While the novel does address these aspects, it flinches away from the worst of them. This certainly makes reading about extremely difficult subjects easier, but… I’m not sure it should be easy. The novel doesn’t have the grit it takes to tell this story. I got just as much sense of them from Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (admittedly, very tough competition), and the story is a lot more enjoyable.

I don’t care much for Briseis’s perspective, particularly in the first half of the novel. So few things actually happen on the page. It’s seemingly endless pages of her thoughts and reactions, but there’s little dialogue or action. The novel tells us what to think rather than presenting events and allowing us to draw our own conclusions. In contrast to Briseis’s stately, measured narrative, the dialogue of the other characters is awkward, modern British and filled with slang and swearing. If this is an attempt to show the stark differences between the Greeks and the Trojans, then mission accomplished, but it mostly comes off as utterly at odds with the rest of the narration.

The structure is also somewhat unwieldy. There are strangely placed questions in italics where it seems like Briseis might be speaking to someone, but it’s oddly explained later as her talking to the “voices” in her head and then rarely mentioned again. …What? I don’t understand why they’re included at all, since they bring little to the story or the overall structure. Part II shockingly switches to Achilles’s perspective, which seems contrary to the novel’s entire agenda. It may be that, no matter who else was there, this was always going to be Achilles’s story, and he takes over it as he does everything else, but that seems like a generous interpretation. His scenes bring more of the landmarks of the Trojan war to the page, but the book strangely skips out on some of the important ones, like Hector’s death. I have no sense of why Barker included some and not others. Then there are sections where it’s hard to tell who the narrator is; it might be Patroclus, or it might be some weird version of third person omniscient. In order to truly tell this story from the margins, I would have stayed in Briseis’s perspective or branched out to other slave girls rather than include the traditional heroes.

The characters aren’t bad, but they aren’t wonderful. I think Barker underestimates the levels of agency or power that Briseis might have, even as a slave, and she comes off somewhat flat at times. Her characterization of some slave girls as “genuinely indifferent” strikes me as patently false, not to mention dehumanizing. Achilles is little more than an angry, overgrown child at times, but apparently the one thing every interpretation can agree on is that Patroclus is an angel and everyone in Achilles’s camp loves him. There’s a missed opportunity for more character development between him and Briseis and, again, I have a better sense of their relationship from TSOA. Similarly, the relationship development between Briseis and Achilles comes too late in the novel to make a real impact. My overall impression is that The Silence of the Girls fails to live up to its potential, but the potential is definitely there.

I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.

REVIEW
Having been a classics minor in college, I was delighted to have the opportunity to read this book. Pat Barker does justice to these ancient stories in The Silence of the Girls. For so long the stories of men like Agamemnon and Achilles have had their stories told, but in this novel, readers get to hear the narrative arc of one of the women who history had previously erased - Briseis. Beautifully written and sure to be a hit for fans of books like Circe and Song of Achilles.

PRAISE
“The Silence of the Girls is brilliant—fascinating, riveting and blood chilling in its matter-of-fact attitude toward war and those who are its spoils. I loved the book for its craftsmanship, as well is its wonderful evocation of the ancient world and the not-so-ancient minds of the people inhabiting it.”
—Diana Gabaldon

“An extraordinary novel…[and] the current debate about power and control in sexual relationships makes it a very timely one. If this doesn’t make every serious literary prize shortlist, I’ll be very surpised.”
—The Bookseller

AUTHOR
Pat Barker is the author of Union Street, Blow Your House Down, The Century’s Daughter, The Man Who Wasn’t There, the Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road), Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, and the Life Class trilogy (Life Class, Toby’s Room, and Noonday). She lives in Durham, England.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Amazing retelling of the story of Briseis. Read it in two days. A truly delicate exploration of the lives of women who are one day wealthy & in charge of their homes to being slaves examined in a court yard. The voice of Briseis-her fear, longing, and struggle to keep the core of herself to herself, with dignity, makes for compulsive reading. The emotional & mental disintigration of Achilles after the death of Patroclus is unsparing in its depiction. A book worth rereading again and again for the sheer marvel of the writing.

As someone who read and enjoyed Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and is an avid lover of Greek mythology--any mythology, really, I could not wait to get my hands on Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls.

Reading is always an emotional act for me. It's why I prefer fiction to non-fiction. Books about Achilles just slay me. I already know how it ends. I already know who Achilles is and who he is not, but I always experience a bleak hope that perhaps this time is different.

Spoiler alert: this time is not different, but it is phenomenal.

This is the first retelling I have read that is written from a female perspective and Briseis is a solid choice. She is pragmatic and passionate in equal measure. She seems almost disconnected from the events as she relates them, but over time, as her relationships with Patroclus and Achilles develop, she seems to war with herself as she becomes invested in her new life, but still carries a hatred for what has been done to her and those who have done it.

What is there to say about Achilles that hasn't been said? Far more intelligent minds than mine have ruminated over him for centuries. I will say that I always experience Achilles as a punch in the gut. I want him to be more than he is, and yet that is what is always so compelling to me. Don't we all want to be better than we are?

As far as the writing goes, I don't have a single complaint. It is solid and much of its poignancy is derived from the starkness of the prose. This is not a retelling that shies away from the harsh truths of ruthless war and men who think themselves gods. 

I won't get political, but this is a timely novel that seeks to give voice to women--who are largely rendered silent through history--and it does it well. 

Thank you to Doubleday for providing an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Expected publication: September 4th 2018

5/5 Stars

A retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis (minor Trojan queen, taken as a war prize and given to Achilles as a slave, then claimed by Agamemnon), and given a radical, feminist spin by focusing on the silenced woman and servants.

This book should have been amazing. I mean, how do you look at that description and not want to immediately read it? Unfortunately, it's nothing but a disappointment. The prose is just... not good. It's shallow and adolescent, with a frequent reliance on poor word choices that feel like a rushed first draft (Once or twice, Tecmessa really annoyed me with well-meant but irritating advice on how to make the best of things.)(That’s the other thing I remember: the rats. Rats everywhere. You could be walking along the path between two rows of huts and suddenly the ground ahead of you would get up and walk—oh, yes, as bad as that!)(I lost myself in that work—and I found myself too. I was learning so much, from Ritsa, but also from Machaon who, once he realized I was interested and already had a little knowledge and skill, was generous with his time. I really started to think: I can do this.). I suppose none of this sounds particularly bad out of context, but two hundred pages of such middling, do-nothing prose and I was bored out of my mind.

Everyone's characterization is flat and indistinguishable, which is particularly sad because The Iliad gives one such specific types to work with and yet Barker still couldn't make anyone feel memorable. As one example, Odysseus isn't remotely clever. Make him evil, sure, make him uncaring or arrogant or cruel, but what's the point of an Odysseus who isn't clever?

But the thing that most annoyed me was that Barker hasn't made the story new in any way. Sure, Briseis is now the narrator, but she has no plot of her own, no relationships, no cares, no desires, no actions that depart from the original. The climax is still Patroclus's death and Achilles's grief; in fact, the book increasingly departs from Briseis's first-person narration to third-person-limited focused on Achilles (or occasionally Patroclus) until by Part Two she only gets half the chapters. How are you writing a feminist reclamation if you're using the exact same events and giving them the same emotional weight and even the same male perspective?

I think Barker is vaguely aware of this problem herself, because we do get this passage near the end of the book:
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. Here I was, again, waiting for Achilles to decide when it was time for bed, still trapped, still stuck inside his story, and yet with no real part to play in it.
But for all this half-paragraph of protest, Barker's the one who chose to write the book this way.

To be fair, I didn't entirely hate it. There are moments that work, like this one, a favorite of mine:
Like everybody else, I’d been shaken by the sudden appearance of Priam in Achilles’s hall. I’d felt blank and at the same time abnormally attentive. I could still hear him pleading with Achilles, begging him to remember his own father—and then the silence, as he bent his head and kissed Achilles’s hands.
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.

But what good does exist is frequently undercut by later developments. Take this, the opening lines of the book:
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.”
It may not surprise you when I say no one, and certainly not Briseis, ever calls Achilles a butcher in the actual book. We do, however, get plenty of praise for him from Briseis's perspective, from calling him "the most beautiful man alive" to admiring descriptions of his loneliness, his skillfulness, his musical abilities, his healing powers, his tenderness for his men, etc. There's also the fact that Achilles's relationship with his mother is depicted as bizzarely incestous, which uh, I suppose Barker has finally come up with a new twist on the Iliad with that choice. I'm not sure why, though.

In short: UGH. So much potential, and yet so little worthwhile accomplished.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2496398906

Barker tells the story of the Trojan War from the view of Briseis, the Trojan woman claimed by Achilles whose later claiming by Agamemnon results in Achilles' famous sulking in his tent and refusing to fight. Using both first person and omniscient POVs, Barker seeks to tell of the silent women taken in the war. While the conceit is a great one, the characters mainly feel tired and shallowly created. The women are quite stock: the sex worker, the healer, the Stockholm Syndrome victim. Briseis herself is bland: we learn little of her actual character, her likes, her dislikes. She reports her sections in a flat, pragmatic manner. Perhaps this is intended to illustrate the numbing effects of war, but it didn't work for me as such. Where the novel is most compelling is in the descriptions of the ghastly and gruesome aspects of the war; I ended up feeling pity and horror for Hector and Priam than the women.

This novel has an awful title and a great pedigree--Pat Barker is a Booker Prize winner and their is no end of rich story to be culled from the Illiad. It's satisfying to read, it's an unusual take on the siege of Troy, and I especially liked the dialogue, which sounds natural without being too jarring. "His mother's a fish," Agamemnon says disparagingly of Achilles' mom, Thetis the sea goddess. All this is good. But why did I expect and hope for more?

The narrator is Briseis, a former queen now Achilles' spoil of war. She's young but has no illusions about what is going to happen to her. and how tenuous her position is. She knows women have no power and must hope for the best while keeping her head down and her mouth shut. Choosing Briseis for this role places her in the palatial hut of Achilles and Patroclus to see their extraordinary relationship, and we see how as a spoil of war, she becomes a catalyst for the dispute with Agamemnon that will kill both men and bring about the fall of Troy. And, of course, both Briseis and Helen will take the blame for all of it.

The elephant in the room with "Silence of the Girls" is, of course, "Song of Achilles" with it's raw emotion and startling take on gods and mortals.

Unfortunately, Briseis doesn't have enough of a relationship with anyone to bring new light to the siege or the fall. The plight of the captive women is an interesting take, but lacked the power of emotion I wanted to feel. I wanted more from the whole novel, especially from a work by Pat Barker.

Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls is easily one of the best books I've read this year. It made the plight of the Trojan women very relatable and immediate.