The Silence of the Girls

One sentence synopsis... Barker's retelling of the Iliad imagines how the war would be remembered today if women's stories weren't marginalized, denied credibility, or wholly dismissed. .

Read it if you liked... historical reimaginings like Madeline Miller's ‘Circe' or ‘Song of Achilles'.

Dream casting... Rose Byrne played the role of Briseis (this novel's protagonist) in the 2004 ‘Troy' but for this story's version of her I'd pick someone younger like Eliza Scanlen.

I really enjoyed listening to this on audiobook. I had been putting off reading this for a while, not really sure why, but glad I finally picked it up. I enjoyed the narration, I enjoyed the story, and I always enjoy retellings of classics, add in the unique perspective of being told mostly by Achilles prize slave, made this book a win for me.

It's hard to think of a more tired, stale, boring, clapped-out premise than “famous historical tale told from the perspective of the women involved”, which has been done to death and far past it in the last 20 years, mostly by authors who unfortunately think that the premise is somehow so inherently interesting that they don't have to do any more work.

So the only reason I read this book is it's by Pat Barker, who is a genius, and my god she did not disappoint.

This is better than Homer. Really. The story lives and breathes with a visceral reality and enormous compassion, both completely typical of Barker's work, who I swear understands men at war better than any living writer.

This is the story of the Illiad as told in the voice of the female captive whose seizure by Agamemnon is the source of the “rage of Achilles” in the first place. Briseis was born a princess whose city fell the marauding Achaeans as they set siege to Troy. Chosen by Achilles as a prize, taken from him by a churlish commander, she sees the relations of power and love and lust and pride and honour that drive these men to the pursuit of glory, and their doom.

The brilliance of Barker's work is we both feel for Briseis's plight while somehow also finding sympathy for her captors, who are no less trapped in the same system of power and violence.

One really notable feature of her telling is the linear modernity of the narrative structure: Homer frequently introduces characters and only much later tells us important information about them–I swear he was making it up as he went along–which can make the Illiad challenging for modern audiences who don't already know who everyone is. Barker isn't having any of that, and uses all the lessons we have learned in the past two thousand years to tell the story more fluently and effectively than Homer did.

TW: graphic violence, gore, sexual assault, rape, slavery, child death, animal death, human sacrifice, mentions of suicide.. I'm sure I'm missing more.

I'm not even sure how to describe my feelings about this one. It's a wonderfully narrated story of the fall of Troy through the perspective of Briseis (and also Achilles in parts) and it feels like a completely different story when told through the voice of a woman who has lost everything to the war and is now a slave who doesn't know what will happen to her in the future. It's harsh, bleak and violent, but it is also a tale of survival and resilience of the many women who have lost their agency and freedom and all loved ones, but still brave an existence among their enemies and now masters. The audiobook narration also makes us feel the characters' emotions very deeply, and I think it definitely enhanced my experience of the book. I just received the arc of thee sequel of this book, and I can't wait to read it soon.

Spoiler: Achilles dies!

This is a brutal, grim, and gritty retelling of the Iliad. Mostly from the perspective of Briseis, this novel pulls the glory off the epic and tells of the enslavement, rape, mass murder, torture, and human sacrifice of the Trojan War. NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART, but beautiful nonetheless.

Lets deconstruct this. 3 Pros and Cons
Pros:
1) I actually loved Achilles. Whether that was the intention or not, that's what happened.
2) It was off putting. It gave you the creeps and made you upset at the injustice which is the point
3) Well, I guess I don't have a third Pro :(

Cons:
1) It was bland. Is that a bad thing to say about a book about people being raped? Unfortunately, whilst some parts were gripping, others weren't and I think that is down to the lack of connection with the main character. I honestly do not really care for her which is a sad thing to say
2) I didn't like how it was set up as if it was about the forgotten women of the Trojan War when it was really about one woman. Yes she is important, however it seems as if I don't get a fully reliable or complete view of what it was like for the women.
3) I didn't like the ending. Unfortunately for me, it was unsatisfactory.

Retelling of the Iliad from the point of view of Briseis, the slave/concubine of Achilles. I'm drawn to read these “famous story retold from the point of view of the silenced women” books, and inevitably I'm disappointed by them, because their point seems to be just to demonstrate that the women are/were silenced. Although this book is well written and readable, I don't know that it adds anything to the Iliad, which has always been a brutal story.

I honestly did not have very high hopes for this book as I recently read the Song of Achilles and was not a very big fan. Briseis was one of the few characters I really liked from that book, so I decided to give this one a try. The biggest difference for me is that the story isn't being romanticized. Achilles is pretty terrible and Briseis is aware of it the whole time. The love between Achilles and Patroclus is there. I also liked the portrayal of Patroclus. I felt like I got a better understanding of his character outside of his fealty to Achilles. He was caring and strong. I'm still not a huge fan of ancient Greek mythology (outside of Xena), but I liked this take on it.

Left with mixed feelings!! I think mostly I don't love that Achilles and Patroclus perspectives were included, it's giving - the girls continue to be silenced. If perhaps the story ended with only their perspectives and Briseis voice fully gone - giving into the title, maybe it would've made sense, but that doesn't happen, so why am I hearing these men speak at all? My interest really wavered through most of it, got good at the end. Perhaps bc I am already so familiar with Achilles story?

Because make no mistake, this was his story... Briseis says this line somewhere towards the end of the book, and it comes a little too late. The Silence of the Girls starts out great, presenting The Iliad to us from the perspective of Briseis, the young Trojan wife who becomes Achilles' sex slave after seeing her family slaughtered by the Greek hero. Briseis is our eye on the fate of the many girls and women who don't get acknowledged as more than just war prices or objects by the Greeks, and likewise by the men who wrote and propagated this story. Yet halfway in, after having been 95% Briseis' POV, Achilles and Patroclus receive more and more chapters until suddenly it feels Briseis is only there to be a fly on the wall of their story. The disappointing thing is that this happens at half-way point and rather surprisingly, as if the author had a change of heart. So, what I thought was a fascinating idea at the beginning, falls a bit apart towards the end. Besides, anyone who was read [b:The Song of Achilles 11250317 The Song of Achilles Madeline Miller https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331154660l/11250317.SX50.jpg 16176791] and [b:Circe 35959740 Circe Madeline Miller https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1508879575l/35959740.SY75.jpg 53043399] will have a hard time judging this book for itself, without comparing it to these (and possible other) recent Greek myth retellings. My recommendation would be, read those two instead. The Song of Achilles gives you the Achilles and Patroclus story, and Circe gives you the feminist take on Greek myths.

The silence of the girls, indeed. This is not a book about girls, or women. It's (still, always) a book about Achilles.

This was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and I could not be more disappointed. If you think, like I did, you're going to read some kind of feminist retelling of the Trojan War from women's points of view, readjust your expectations right now. This book, like most others, is not about the always overlooked women, it's about Achilles, and the other men of the war. Yes, there are women, as slaves, scattered throughout the book. Yes, parts (and only parts) of this book are told from Briseis' point of view. But it's not about her forming friendships and alliances with other women, it's not about her life before being captured, it's barely even about her emotions and desires. It's sometimes about her pain and suffering, but not even in any meaningful way—and usually just to show the brutality of men, rather than show the strength of women.

And probably half of it was from Achilles' point of view??? As if there aren't enough books and movies and plays from his perspective. And look, I have nothing against that, I love that shit as much as the next person, but this book promised me something different, something new. And it's just...not. It's not a bad book. It just did not deliver what it promised. I wanted Helen, I wanted Andromache, I wanted Hecuba, Thetis, Penelope. I wanted more Briseis, for goddess' sake, even though she was the “protagonist.”

Also, (and I'm not considering this a spoiler), at the end of the book Briseis is happy she “chose life” instead of killing herself before she was captured, only because she's PREGNANT WITH HER RAPIST'S BABY. COOL. BARF.

I hope A Thousand Ships, which claims to be an “all-female perspective” of the Trojan War, will actually give me what I wanted this book to be.

I'm really not sure how I felt about this one - on the one hand it was utterly grim and despressing, which perfectly captures what these women went through as they were captured, raped, abused, and passed around like objects. On the other hand, even though I can appreciate what it's trying to do, I don't think I enjoyed it as a story. Achilles was portrayed so strangely and his story, conflicts and relationships took over the story of the women. I've never read The Iliad or Song of Achilles so can't really compare them as other reviewers had, but I still found this a bit disappointing.

Pat Barker offers up a retelling of Homer's Illiad from the perspective of 19 year old Briseis who sparked the fight between the mighty Achilles and Agamemnon, King of men. It's the latest in female led interpretations of the classics that's just so hot right now with Madeline Miller's Circe and Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Odyssey.

After the sacking of Lynessus, Briseis is offered to Achilles as a war prize. Her story seems an answer to the line Priam utters in the Iliad, pleading with Achilles to return his son's Hector's body to him. Escorted into the Greek camp by Hermes he falls to his knees and says, “I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.”

When Briseis echoes that statement she does so with a bit more force. “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.”

And while I'm thankful for the arms distance remove the story is often written in, it can almost approach impassive. Barker does occasionally brings the focus in and it's justly unsettling. From Achilles' spear piercing Briseis' brother's neck as he lay wriggling like a stuck pig as Briseis watches. This warrants barely any attention from Achilles as he fastidiously puts his foot on his neck to pull out his spear. And when Agamemnon takes Briseis as his own, he shows his contempt and ownership of her by hurling a gob of phlegm into her mouth.

The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, the camp of war brides and slaves, Achilles communing with his goddess mother all lacked the heft I was hoping for. The personal stakes seemed diffused under the haze of hoary legend and Briseis' defiant sounding ending seemed unbelievably sad and ironic.