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

i loved how this book used the classic narrative techniques and themes/struggles of the Iliad to recall the original text, while also adding new meaning. For example, she uses a catalog to evoke the stories of the numberless men who die at Troy, but it is through their mothers’ stories that we hear of them. Similarly, themes of choice, fate, honor, hospitality, and glory were explored through Achilles, like the original text, but also through Briseis, who reflects on her own feelings as well as Achilles’.

For all it’s accuracy to the original epic, the amount of British slang really bothered me. While the imagery could evoke the distant past, the constant use of “bloody” / “bloody hell” brings the reader immediately back to the present. It also made this dark book on the realities of war comical in a way.

Though the British slang was kinda crazy, this was an accurate and refreshing retelling of the Iliad.

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alice451's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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emmagossage's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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patsypoo's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.

Really enjoyed this one! I love The Song of Achilles and it's nice to see another angle of it through Briseis' eyes. It's a very tough one to get through at times unsurprisingly. It's a war story after all so all the content warnings!

On one hand, I wish there had been less of Achilles here and on the other hand I feel his perspective is also needed to round out this particular story.

One drawback for me was the dialogue. It's very laddish and modern Britain to my taste and although I got used to it, it is kind of jarring on occasion and it took me out of the story somewhat.

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