Thursday 28 February 2019

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker


The Siege of Troy, so famously described in Homer’s epic poem The Ilyad, has intrigued people for thousands of years. Homer’s story brings together the ambitions of kings and princes whose best efforts tend to be undone by the mischief of the gods. As you may recall, Aphrodite promises Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, to Paris, a prince of Troy. Only Helen is already married to Menelaus, the king of Sparta, who takes exception when Paris abducts Helen and carts her off to Troy.

The ten years of war that ensue feature some big names: Agamemnon, the king who bargains with the gods for a wind so the Greek armies can set sail, only to discover he must sacrifice his daughter; Odysseus who dreams up the Trojan horse idea which allows the Greeks to enter the citadel; Achilles, the famous warrior, whose sea-goddess mother makes him almost invincible – apart from his famous heel.

But most of these characters are men. Enter Pat Barker who tells the story of the siege largely from the point of view of Briseis, who has seen her family slaughtered by the Greek armies, before being taken, along with the remaining Trojan women and girls, into slavery. They spend their days weaving; their nights in forced prostitution.

Briseis is an intelligent commentator on what she sees. In service to Achilles, she watches the politics and in-fighting among the leadership. It’s interesting to read her eye-witness view of extraordinary events, including plagues and sacrifices to placate the gods, while the story builds towards Achilles’ final battle. There is epic tragedy here, for Greeks and Trojans alike, as there is in any war. The question is, what kind of future is there for the women caught up in it all. Can Briseis build a new life of her own making?

Pat Barker, who has written some stunning fiction about war previously, has made the events of a thousand or more years BC seem very real. She conjures up the brutality of what Briseis witnesses, the sounds of battle in the background, the filth and squalor, the fear and the loneliness, the ongoing grief. This doesn’t always make for pleasant reading, but The Silence of the Girls is a novel that will draw you in and keep you enthralled, breathing new life into an old story. Recommended.

Reviewed by  Judith McKinnon

Catalogue link:  The Silence of the Girls

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