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

Reviews tagging 'Pedophilia'

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

25 reviews

emilyandthewhippet'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
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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sas_lk's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.25

Heart-wrenching.
The entire time I was reading, I so desperately wanted the women to fight, to try different things, to escape this hell. But at the same time, you know that they will never be able to get out of that situation. It is so sad how a lot of the events are not even historical, in the sense that many women are still treated like this.
At the end, it still ended up being quite a bit about Achilles. While i understand why Barker wanted to do it, I still wish the focus was even more on the women because in the end, it almost felt like the book was forgiving Achilles and the men for what they had done.

That said, when Achilles grieves Patroclus, Barker wrote it extremely well.

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shadereads's review

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I think reading about the brutality of the Trojan war was just too much for me. I wasn't enjoying the story because of the constant rape and sexual assault.

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kt2e56's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

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

1.0

This was dreadful. Barker presents an interesting concept: the Iliad but without the romance and glory of war. Instead told from the point of view of Briseis, a side character who’s role in mythology is often just being tossed from one man to the next. Again: great concept to show us the horrors of war this way and remind us who the “heroes” we still hear about would have really been like.

But holy SHIT what an abysmal execution.

First of all: there’s the obnoxious overuse of very modern phrases and concepts (I mean modern as in there’s no way someone in Ancient Troy would even know what this MEANS let alone say it) which kept taking me out of the story. The author also straight up has no idea how to write dialogue. Each character sounds the same. They all speak the same. Exactly the same. And there’s ZERO consistency. A character will go from speaking fairly normally one chapter to speaking like a British chav the next (no joke. “Me mam bloody well told him to sod off, the wanker.” That’s the level of bizarre random, nonsensical dialect the reader is subjected to. It makes ZERO sense and comes and goes in such an alarming rate) then back to normal a sentence later. It’s insanity.

Most egregiously though, halfway through the book Barker decides to abandon the purpose. It’s no longer the Iliad from Breises’ point of view and told in her voice (granted her voice sounds like everyone else’s but still) but now we’re being subjected to jarring chapters told in third person all about Achilles and events that Breises wasn’t even around for. So the author essentially took back the idea that made this so interesting in the first place by tossing Breises aside and making this all about Achilles and his mommy issues.

Like I truly don’t know what editor approved this. This genuinely felt like I was reading an outline let alone an actual published novel. And a novel that people are apparently fawning over and think is really good and ~feminist~!? I’m just astounded by the praise this mess of a book has received. The one good thing honestly was Achilles being portrayed as a petulant toddler obsessed with breast-feeding a la Homelander in The Boys. That’s it. I hate comparing books but honestly just read Madeline Miller’s “Song of Achilles” even THAT is much more graceful and lyrical and does an infinitely better job of fleshing out Breises (AND SHE IS ONLY A SIDE CHARACTER!!! SHE ISN’T THE CHARACTER TELLING THE STORY!!!) than this drivel did. Both SOA and Circe were so well done and beautifully written that they felt like myths in and of themselves. This is just bizarre.

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beauvisseau's review

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

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

5.0

One word: breathtaking. This retelling of a story as old as time was done so well, you can almost taste the love that the author has for Greek and Trojan mythology. The writing style was impeccable, and I can clearly see all of the conscious choices that the author made regarding things like speaking style, active versus passive speaking styles and the investment in certain themes.

Although the main character, Briseis, does not have a highly developed character, I feel that it fits with her state of being. The grief of losing her loved ones but also one's self can turn you into a shell of memories and thoughts.
One point of criticism though, is that I would have liked to see more perspectives of different women there. It is a missed opportunity to switch between Briseis, Patroclus and Achilles, when two of those three narratives have already been explored for centuries but so many narratives are missing.

Amazing work of fiction that truly expands upon the existing narratives and opened my eyes to many new ideas about war, feminism, story-telling, slavery and power. Would recommend to anyone.

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