The Silence of The Girls by Pat Barker is the story of the Trojan women taken prisoner during the Trojan War, a legendary conflict in Greek mythology, where the Greeks besieged the city of Troy in Turkey.
Pat Barker writes about the effects of war very well, never labouring the pointlessness of this Greek-Trojan war which, as the foreword describes "is the result of a bar-room brawl over a woman". That woman being Helen. The war began when Paris, a Trojan prince, abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta.
The story is famous for its key characters - Achilles, Hector, and Odysseus, and for the iconic Trojan Horse, a ruse used by the Greeks to infiltrate and conquer the city.
In the Greek camp, Briseis watches and waits for the war's outcome. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, ransacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a totally different life, and when Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks.
Observant and unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis' people but also of the ancient world at large.
Briseis is just one of thousands of women living behind the scenes - the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead. Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp vividly to life.
With complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, it's a very good read.
∼ Happy Reading∼
Polly x
