Reviews with content warning for Ableism - The Women of Troy

Not necessarily something I would rave about, but it was a good travel companion for my bus ride to work. The story did drag on a bit at times and the ending kind of left me going "that's it?". Definitely caught off guard by the very unnecessary and uncalled for use of the R-slur twice in the book.

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jesticulate's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad

3.5

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halfelfschollar's review against another edition

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sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No

2.0

Truely disappointing.

After reading the first book 'Silence of the Girls' I had high hopes for this story. And yet I was left disappointed. I truely wanted to enjoy this book but I didn't at all.

In many places in the story it felt like Barker's modern societal ideas and expectations bled into the story in ways that did not belong in a historical setting. This is where it would lose me as I became confused and in some cases angry at the way Briseris thought.

Silence of the Girls works better as a stand alone.

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chilly_librarian's review against another edition

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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? No

2.5

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deedireads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.75

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Those who loved The Silence of the Girls will love The Women of Troy, its sequel. It offers a powerful look, through the eyes of Briseis, into the aftermath of Troy’s defeat and what it meant for the Trojan women who became slaves.

For you if: You like feminist Greek mythology retellings. I recommend reading The Silence of the Girls first!

FULL REVIEW:

First, thank you Doubleday for the gifted finished copy! I loved The Silence of the Girls, its predecessor, and had a feeling this one would also be for me. I was right. The Women of Troy is gutting, thought-provoking, and intelligently, beautifully written. If you love Greek mythology retellings, this one’s got your name written all over it.

The Women of Troy picks up where The Silence of the Girls ended, picking up Briseis’s story at the end of the Trojan war. Briseis, who was Achilles’s bed slave while he was alive, is now carrying his child and married to one of his former counselors. We also get a few chapters from the perspective of Pyrrhus, Achille’s son, who is grappling (and cracking) with the enormous pressure of upholding a legacy.

Two big things shined for me in this story. First, the way Barker continues to give enslaved women voices, showing the unimaginable things they were expected to just absorb and live with; to go from being Trojan royalty, mothers, daughters — to bed slaves of the men who murdered everyone they loved. We already saw Briseis go through that in The Silence of the Girls, and it’s fascinating (and devastating) to see her attempt to coach her friends through it while also attempting to still protect herself and grapple with the distance her privileged position wedges between them, between her very identity as a Trojan. The gulf widens even as she grasps at it.

The second thing was Pyrrhus’s spiral. Before I read this book, I brushed up on him, and I ended up reading a two-part blog series from Madeline Miller. She says there are two famous depictions of him: the first, and most well known, is Vergil’s portrait in the Aneid of a narcissistic psychopath. The second is from Sophocles’ Philoctetes, which shows him as a child attempting to do right by his father. In this book, Pat Barker seems to have merged these two versions, showing a boy cracking and breaking under the weight of his father’s legacy.

And throughout, of course, we have Pat Barker’s beautiful prose. Read The Silence of the Girls, if you haven’t yet, and then read this!

Content Warnings

elementarymydear's review against another edition

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challenging dark 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? It's complicated

5.0

“We women are peculiar creatures. We tend not to love those who murder our families.”

I absolutely loved The Silence of the Girls, so when I (somehow) got the opportunity to review The Women of Troy I jumped at the chance. Directly following on from the previous book, we follow Briseis and the other women who have been taken prisoner by the Greeks following the Trojan War.

📚Read this and other reviews on my blog!📚

This book was – dare I say it – even better than The Silence of the Girls. From the very first page we are thrown into the action, in the belly of the Trojan Horse. My one criticism of the previous book was how towards the end we suddenly jumped to perspective to Achilles (who we had grown to hate) to advance the plot. That wasn’t a problem here; the ‘plot’ of the Trojan War, told through the men’s eyes, was interspersed with our main story, so it didn’t feel quite as jarring when we switched perspectives.

Briseis, now a married woman (though not by choice), is now in a position to help the other women in the camp, many of whom have gone from being the daughters of Trojan nobility to Greek slaves. We really got to see both the strength and flaws of her character in the way she interacted with the other women, and she has the self-awareness at one point to admit that the way the men view the women has influenced the way she does.

Once again Pat Barker does not shy away from the reality of war and its consequences for women, both in the violence that they experience and the way it shapes them as people. Briseis’ repeated statement that she hopes her sister is dead rather than enslaved captures the depth of trauma these women go through. That being said, there are still moments of joy, made all the more precious by the women’s day-to-day lives.

One touch I particularly enjoyed was Briseis’ interactions with Cassandra. Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but is cursed that she will never be believed. The way this was written was fantastic; it would be so easy for the other women to be mocking and outright dismissive of Cassandra, but instead they were sympathetic and pitying. It made Cassandra’s curse even more heart-wrenching. When she made a prediction she was met with care but still with a total lack of belief.

This book was everything I hoped it would be and more. It’s the perfect sequel, both continuing the task the first book set out to do and achieving more. It is an absolute must-read.

I received a free ARC from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

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