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

Reviews tagging 'Vomit'

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

48 reviews

stitchbooks22's review

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

The silence of the girls wasn’t badly written and was easy enough to get into reading.

However, can publishers and marketing teams stop pushing the term “feminist retelling” onto books that are so clearly NOT a feminist retelling? That is my biggest issue with this book. If the book had been done differently, it had the potential to be a feminist retelling. But trying to focus a bit more on the women in a story that is male dominated and being unsuccessful at focusing on the women and their own lives does NOT make a book a feminist retelling. That is my main gripe with this book.

So if you’re looking for a feminist retelling of Greek mythology, this is not it. Otherwise it was an okay book.

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theothergrl's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

This book does a wonderful job of showing us how patriarchy harms both women and men. It's a retelling of Achilles' story of the Battle of Troy from the perspective of his bed slave, Briseis. Their horrific and very sad relationship is explored earnestly. It's not a story about love, it's about two people pushed into bed and how they grieve immense loss not together but side-by-side. In different ways they are both denied the ability to process these emotions. They both grapple with their anger at the wasteful and pointless reasons for their loss. The loneliness and pain they both experience come from two hands of the same body, patriarchy. I think the way this is shown so paralleled throughout story, not in comparison to one another, is what makes this such brilliant feminist literature.

And, of course considering everything else, this book is a wonderful example of how we can tell stories with even the extremes of sexual violence, and tell them well without gratuitousness nor overly graphic. I did not once feel that there was no need for a particular sex/rape scene, when they were there, it added to the story.

The 3 main characters in this book are loveable (and 2 very much despiseable) in a very complicated and heart wrenching way. But you'll definately enjoy spending time with them and hearing their story, I would 100% recommend this book.

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tmickey's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

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esterohman's review

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

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

3.0

This was a quick and easy read, although not my favorite Greek mythology inspired novel. I liked the focus on female perspective, and it was interesting seeing the missing viewpoint in the original stories. However, it just wasn’t that exciting to read. I think that it’s just my own perspective and not the fault of the book however.

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