Book Review - 'The Silence of the Girls' by Pat Barker

This was on my Christmas list – which is almost always books – and Gordon bought it for me. After reading ‘Circe’ by Madeline Miller, I was excited to read this.

‘When the Greek Queen Helen is kidnapped by Trojans, the Greeks sail in pursuit, besieging the city of Troy. Trapped in the Greek soldiers’ camp is another captured queen, Briseis. Condemned to be bed-slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her family, she becomes a pawn in a menacing game between bored and frustrated warriors. In the centuries after this most famous war, history will write her off, a footnote in a bloody story scripted by vengeful men – but Briseis has a very different tale to tell…’

If you’ve read ‘The Iliad’, you’ll know the story; in that way, there aren’t any surprises. The familiar characters are all present – Achilles and Patroclus, Odysseus and Agamemnon…

The story begins in the city of Lyrnessus, which is about to be sacked by the Greeks. Briseis, the wife of King Mynes, is leading the women and children to the supposed safety of the citadel. We learn of events, told in first person, from her point of view.

“Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles… How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him ‘the butcher’… I heard him before I saw him: his battle cry ringing around the walls of Lyrnessus.”

The women remain where they are with their children even though they know defeat is imminent.
“An hour later, hearing the crash and splinter of wood breaking, I ran up on to the roof, leant over the parapet and saw Greek fighters spilling through a breach in the gates. Directly below me, a knot of writhing arms and shoulders advanced and then retreated as our men struggled to push the invaders back. No use, they were pouring through the breach…”

Briseis witnesses Achilles kill her husband and her brothers…
“Every man in the city died that day, fighting at the gates or on the palace steps.”

She remains on the roof, watching the soldiers loot the city in an organised, methodical way before they turn their attention to the women and children. Young boys are dragged away and killed as are pregnant women in case their unborn babies are male.

The captive women are taken to the Greeks’ camp where they are allocated to the victors. Briseis is given to Achilles as his war prize. Taken to his dwelling, there she meets Patroclus.
“… I recognised the name. The war had been going on a long time, we knew a lot about the enemy commanders. This was Achilles’ closest companion, his second in command…”

Briseis is left with no choice but to accept her new life as a captured slave. Achilles seems indifferent to her; Patroclus shows her kindness and she’s more relaxed around him, as she would be around a friend; she makes friends with some of the other slave women…

Barker does not tread lightly in describing the brutality of war, especially for civilians, especially the captive women. What makes it more appalling to read, to imagine, I think, is the almost casual way horrific scenes are described.

Yet, for all I really wanted to enjoy this book, I struggled to engage with the story, with Briseis, with any of it.

For me, Briseis narrating her story came across as if she was reading someone else’s narrative; I didn’t feel as if I was reading of her direct experiences.

Whereas the first part of the book is told by Briseis, the second part and some of the third is of Achilles’ story told in third person. That kept taking me out of the story, the switching between first and third.

Reading Achilles’ story left me, for want of a better word, confused. Was I supposed to feel sorry for him? Was I, somehow, supposed to try and see things from his perspective? To, maybe, justify why he acted the way he did?

Yet, despite those parts of the story, he comes across as little more than a moody, petulant child in the body of a boorish man.

I felt those chapters took away from what the women were going through. We already know the story from the men’s point of view – as it said on the back cover, “a… story scripted by… men”. I was expecting a story purely from the perspective of the captive women, the forgotten women, and to see the men through their eyes. Even if that was a sympathetic view of the men.

Then there’s the language, which is unexpectedly modern and jarring, given the ancient setting; the soldiers sound like stereotypical football hooligans.

Achilles’ reaction when Briseis is presented to him as his prize… ‘“Cheers, lads,” he said. “She’ll do.”’

It also felt ‘wrong’ to hear Achilles refer to his mother, Thetis, as “Mummy”.

I found some of the characters too modern, especially Patroclus. Compared to all the other men, he’s portrayed as kind-hearted and considerate, even though he also relishes killing the enemy.

Another thing I found odd, there were moments where Briseis speaks directly to the reader as if imagining the reader questioning her and using that to further justify her behaviour, as if the repetition makes it ok.
“You may be thinking: Why did this shock you so much? I can only say again: this wasn’t a man, this was a child.”

The only ‘plus’ point I’ll give this is, it really opened my eyes to the fate of captive women in war. It made me think of the choices they make to survive, and how their daily life is filled with ‘normal’ activities like preparing food, washing clothes, even caring for the sick who are still the enemy.

Usually, when I don’t enjoy a book, I donate it to charity. But I’ll be keeping this one because Gordon bought it for me. It’s a good example of wrongly expecting every book written by a respected author to be as great as the ones that made their name.