Reviews with content warning for Cursing - The Silence of the Girls

This was such a fun read. I can go on for ages about the things I love and how interesting it was to see the story of the Illiad and the personalities of some of my favorite people in Greek Mythology *cough* Patroclus *cough* 🩷

That being said, it is from the point of view of the girls given to the warriors as sex slaves after cities were taken over. So there are several rape scenes throughout the book. There is also a lot of strong language.

I probably wouldn't read again, but it was an extremely well written book and super interesting.

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yorozuya's review

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mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

My book club chose to read 'The Silence of the Girls' by Pat Barker- which suits me well because I absolutely adore Greek retellings!!!

It's the story of the Trojan War that we all know and have heard many times - but told from the female perspective this time: The Trojan women who were taken as slaves by the Greek.

The prose is overall beautiful and I paused just to admire how the words were arranged several times. There were also some expressions that took me by surprise in the context of this narrative, though perhaps the author wanted to show the coarser side of our more romanticised view on Ancient Greece.

Towards the middle/end, the book shifted to the male perspective a bit too much for my liking. I loved the insight into Achilles's mind (don't I always) and how the same scene could look from both his and Briseis's (the main narrator) point of view but despite the book's title I don't want these women's voices to be silenced.

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chloj_'s review against another edition

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challenging emotional inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

review:

first things first: i love a greek mythology retelling, and this did not disappoint. however, this is something a lot more than simply a mythology retelling. this is such an amazing reflection of womanhood. barker does such a beautiful job of relaying the female experience, with all it’s varying emotions and complexities. depictions of war are typically male dominated; blood, gore and war is so often synonymous for masculinity. while her portrayal of masculinity is complex and very well-written (particularly that of achilles), the raw vulnerability of the story’s women is breathtaking to behold. it was powerful, incredibly moving, and truly (in my opinion) a modern masterpiece.

!!spoilers ahead!!

‘his idea of female beauty was a woman so fat if you slapped her backside in the morning she'd still be jiggling when you got back home for dinner.’ damn me too
‘she could’ve been kind to me and she wasn’t; she could’ve helped me find my feet and she didn’t.’
‘when i got to the door i paused with my hand on the latch and looked back, but she’d already turned away’
the main character’s relationship with femininity is so cleverly written- both her relationship with other women, and with her own femaleness
‘but the dying man, his face wiped clean of pain, cradled his spilling intestines as gently as a mother nurses her newborn child.’
‘“it’ll be alright,” i said, knowing it wouldn’t.’
‘he fucked as quickly as he killed, and for me it was the same thing. something in me died that night.’
the emotions in this book are soooo beautiful done
‘the bed was cold.’ this one sentence is so incredibly powerful
‘no girl ever dressed more carefully for her wedding than achilles for the battlefield’
‘as long as i lived and remembered, [my brothers] weren’t really dead.’
the relationship between briseis and iphis is SO special- it is born entirely from shared tragedy and the kindness only women can share with each other.
that depiction of wasteland at the end of 46/start of 47 is SUCH a beautiful depiction of the waste of female beauty (both physical and mental) at the hands of men
‘the world began to close in around me, and i realised that the songs belonged to my brothers and not me’
‘i always remember that she wept for me when i couldn’t weep for myself’
the list format of the people Achilles killed / how they died is SO good- it really displays how the repeated trauma and war has made tragedy something clinical.
‘before leaving, he always bent down and kissed him in the mouth, though the lips had darkened and begun to retract.’
‘Why him? Why not me? He asks the questions over and over, as if one day they might have a different answer, and the burden of guilt be lifted at last.’
achilles grief is written so beautifully
‘and i do what countless women before me had been forced to. i spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and brothers.’
‘now my own story can begin’

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megamusic14's review

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

3.25

I’m general, there were parts of this book that weren’t my cup of tea. And this author’s style isn’t my favorite. However, I was overcome by the message the book portrays. Women having no voice in their story and what that looks like. A very heavy story showing vivid descriptions of what war can look like.

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nialiversuch's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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franzeerdbeerbacke's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

This book needs a trigger warning.

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withlivjones's review

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A retelling of the Trojan War that provides a particularly graphic and brutal depiction of the Greek army as the bloodthirsty villains instead of the heroes presented in the Iliad.

I tried and failed to read this book twice before finally getting through it. It is a very slow-paced book that only really picks up in the second half. What really threw me off, however, is that while this book is marketed as being narrated by Briseis, there are many chapters (starting from about a third of the way in and gradually getting more frequent) where the point of view suddenly shifts to some of the men - most often Achilles, but also at points Patroclus and Priam. While this does provide an interesting perspective of the war, since few writers have dared to examine the depths of Achilles’ psyche in such detail, it was really not what I was expecting from a book that wanted to tell a more female-focused version of the myth. The dilemma is this: women are notoriously silent in Greek mythology and hardly ever have the freedom to tell their own story, so why, then, in a novel where Briseis is presented as reclaiming her own narrative, is a male perspective inserting itself into said narrative just like they have done for the last two thousand years?

The novel is still very enjoyable and well-written, and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Greek mythology, but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that I seemed to be reading a different book to the one that was advertised.

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condygurl's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

3.5

Trigger warning! There are quite a few scenes regarding violence towards children and women, these take the forms of not only physical abuse, but also rape, molestation, and murder.

This is a story of the war between the Greeks and Troy due to Helen. Helen plays a very minor role in the story.

The story is from the perspective of a captured woman who once was going to be Queen, but instead becomes the slave to the most fierce warrior of all time.

The only part I was truly upset about is the author silencing the girls. The beginning starts out very strong, but then we switch POV, and poof, out goes the female voice, and in comes the crazy male voice. It also got a bit repetitive in the camp, but I guess that is par for the course because how different is daily living from day to day when you are a slave?

Very good story but I think it could have been better if the author stuck with one pov.

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