I didn’t want to read this book. Not because I didn’t think it would be good – I’ve heard mainly positive things – but because I don’t love mythology, I’m not big on re-tellings, and I just finished reading Circe, which is both. But I’m so close to finishing the entire shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I’m unlikely ever to get this close again, so I wanted to at least give it the old college try.
Surprisingly, I’m glad I did. It’s still not a book I’d pick up voluntarily, and if she comes out with another re-telling of Greek mythology, I’m unlikely to rush to pick it up, but I enjoyed this book and found it a quick and relatively easy read.
The writing is stellar. She finds the perfect balance between beautiful phrasing and quick plot pacing. I didn’t get bored often, and I didn’t find that it was overwhelmingly focused on battle. It was brutal in places, but didn’t dwell on brutality, it (as far as I can tell) stuck to the original source material but didn’t seem restricted by it, and it was mainly a successful attempt to shift perspectives.
But it wasn’t perfect. One of the main criticisms I’ve seen leveled at this book is that it is set up and marketed as a feminist retelling of the war preceding the fall of Troy, and told from the perspective of a female slave. But there are chapters where it switches to a third-person view of Achilles rather than sticking with this one perspective, and that irked a lot of readers who felt like it did a disservice to its stated aim. (The slave in question is also a former queen, and therefore much higher placed than your average female slave in the Greek camp, which in itself speaks to some privilege.)
I get this critique, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. The chapters that follow Achilles are short and to the point, and they don’t exist to justify or excuse any of his actions. They’re simply a way of telling events our main character would likely not have witnessed. That said, I found them unnecessary. An inventive author (and based on what Barker did with the rest of this story, she is one) could have easily re-worked the story so that Briseis, our main character, picked up some of the information while waiting on the men, or snuck into an area she wasn’t supposed to be in and witnessed some of the events from a concealed viewpoint, or simply heard tell of them from other women. It wouldn’t have been that hard to do, and so the shift in narration just seemed to me a weird choice.
The thing that bothered me most was that occasionally, as Briseis is talking, there’s a line in itallics that is a question, and then she responds as if in answer to an interviewer. But this is never explained, and again, these interjections could have been removed entirely with no negative impact on the plot. Both of these things interrupted the flow of an otherwise smooth story, and neither served any purpose that I could see.
Other than these narration issues and a bit of repetition, I didn’t see a lot to criticize in this book. I didn’t feel that emotionally connected to the characters or the story, but I’m not sure if that was me or the writing. Perhaps a bit of both. I can’t speak to its adherence to source material, not having any interest in reading it, but as a story in its own right, it was compelling and fast-paced. It wasn’t the best book I’ve read this year, but it wasn’t the worst. It entertained me, and I wanted to know how it would end. I liked how Barker imagined the reality of prolonged battle, down to the details of societal structure and day-to-day workings of the camp. I thought she did an excellent job of portraying the realities of this kind of life, and of the complexities of being a slave who has lost their family and home to their new masters, but who needs to adapt to their new surroundings and find a way to survive. In some cases this meant even coming to love their captors – or at least be grateful if they had one rather than being relegated to “common use.”
It’s hard not to compare this to Circe, being as both are female-centric re-tellings of Greek mythology, and both are in contention for the Women’s Prize. But they are very different stories, and I don’t think it would do either a service to compare too closely. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, but both were enjoyable and well written.
I am not rooting for this one to win the prize, but I definitely think it’s a strong piece of writing, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Greek mythology or looking for an easy, fast-paced summer read.
Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles: famed hero, loathed enemy, ruthless butcher, darkly troubled spirit. Briseis’s fate is now indivisibly entwined with his.
No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad: the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers’ camp – in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number – and she will be our witness to history. – Goodreads
Book Title: The Silence of the Girls
Author: Pat Barker
Series: No
Edition: Paperback/Audio
Published By: Penguin/Audible
Narrated By: Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox
Released: August 30, 2018
Genre: Fiction, Mythology, War, Re-Telling, Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019
Pages: 336
Date Read: May 27-June 1, 2019
Rating: 7/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.88/5 (12,093 ratings)