Briseis recounts the atrocities of war and how they affect women, unable to help the women around her as they are abused, raped and traded like chattel. Whether intentional or not, the title calls to mind Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs and her story about helplessly sitting by while the lambs went to the slaughter. Barker's frank, gritty portrayal of a place swamped in stinking rats, alcohol and male ego is especially good in the first half of the book. We experience life in the Greek's camp through her eyes and see all the injustices that take place. When Lyrnessus falls to the Greeks, she becomes a war prize for Achilles but quickly gets caught up in a dispute between him and Agamemnon. The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer's The Iliad that brings in the stories of the women and girls who were, essentially, collateral damage in the Trojan War.īriseis is the narrator.
We never called him any of those things we called him ‘the butcher’." Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives-and it is nothing short of magnificent. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large.īriseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war-the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead-all of them erased by history. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. 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. 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. In the Greek camp, another woman-Briseis-watches and waits for the war's outcome. The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman-Helen.
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