The Silence of the Girls
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By Pat Barker
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2 reviews
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There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent – till now.
Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?
Discover the greatest Greek myth of all – retold by the witness history forgot.
‘Make[s] you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma… You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers’ Evening Standard
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Reviews
St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 7th January 2021.
The silence of the girls. Pat Barker.
Opinions were quite radically divided about this book.
Some readers enjoyed it: ‘a real sense of the position each of the characters are in, male and female’; ‘descriptions of the camp and its life were well written and I could imagine myself there’; ‘so refreshing to hear the voice of some of the Trojan women and the idea of hierarchy gave it an authenticity’; and ‘all in all a good read for me’ were some of the comments. One reader appreciated the insight it gave into the lives of the women in the Greek camp, especially being written in the first person. Another preferred it to Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles’, and is looking forward to the sequel.
Others, however, were disappointed, saying that there was no tension in the story, the personality of Briseis was insufficiently developed, and the prose was simplistic. One reader thought Madeline Miller’s Circe was a better book. ‘Gloomy and unhopeful’, another found it; ‘rather grim’; ‘the treatment of all the women was, to varying degrees, terrible and there seemed to be no escape from the situation’. A little over long, and a bit slow in places, was another comment.
As a ‘women’s version of the Iliad’, some readers found this a good idea and considered it an interesting read, made easy by familiarity with the names and narrative. But another thought that knowing the outcome meant that the characters have no agency. Perceptions of the book did seem to vary, depending partly on the extent to which readers related it to the Iliad.
The book is notable for its modern interjections, for instance, the singing of the ribald song ‘Why was he born so beautiful’, at Achilles’ table. Some readers thought these were out of place. Others, whilst admitting they were surprising, saw them as a modern interpolation of something which might have been sung in that time.
Further comments concerned the ‘magic realism’ of Hector’s body being miraculously preserved from decay; the prevalence of ‘male hubris’ in the story, and the rivalry between Achilles and Agamemnon; and the reality, even in the present, of the situation of women during war.
This book was read during December 2020 and the continuing restrictions due to the Covid-19 virus, and so the discussion was not 'live' as usual, but took place via a Facebook group, email and telephone conversations.
I found this retelling of The Iliad a little disappointing. It's a good story (Barker hasn't changed the plot just the perspective) but it trips along a little too easily. Maybe that's down to my expectations of what a feminist take on The Iliad would look like combined with my high regard for Barker's writing of the Regeneration trilogy. We hear about the rape and subjugation of the girls and women taken as war prizes; harrowing subject matter, yet not a harrowing book despite being (mostly) narrated by one of the women. It left me feeling somehow shortchanged.
