Book Review: The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker (2018)
Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy is another set of books that used to sell well in the bookshop back in the 1990s, and she is another author I always intended to read but hadn’t got round to, until I downloaded her most recent work: The Silence of the Girls . This novel promised to be something a bit different, going back as it does to the time of the Trojan war in Greek Mythology, and offering an account of events chronicled in the Iliad , but from a female perspective. The story is mostly narrated by Briseis, wife of the king of Lyrnessus, which was sacked and destroyed by a raiding army of Myrmidons, led by Achilles. All men and boys were killed (including Briseis’ husband and four brothers), while the women and girls were taken captive to be shared out among the conquering Greek men. Thus, Briseis, who is awarded to the great Achilles as his ‘prize’, is transformed from a queen to a slave with no power, no voice, to be used and abused at the whim of supposedly the most feared a...