The Silence of the Girls

by Pat Barker

Overview

A Washington Post Notable Book
One of the Best Books of the Year: NPR, The Economist, Financial Times
 
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award
Finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction

Here is the story of the Iliad as we’ve never heard it before: in the words of Briseis, Trojan queen and captive of Achilles. Given only a few words in Homer’s epic and largely erased by history, she is nonetheless a pivotal figure in the Trojan War. In these pages she comes fully to life: wry, watchful, forging connections among her fellow female prisoners even as she is caught between Greece’s two most powerful warriors. Her story pulls back the veil on the thousands of women who lived behind the scenes of the Greek army camp—concubines, nurses, prostitutes, the women who lay out the dead—as gods and mortals spar, and as a legendary war hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion. Brilliantly written, filled with moments of terror and beauty, The Silence of the Girls gives voice to an extraordinary woman—and makes an ancient story new again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643581095
Publisher:	Center Point Pub
Publication date:	03/01/2019
Series:	Silence of the Girls Series , #1
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	500
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Pat Barker is the author of Union Street, Blow Your House Down, Liza’s England, The Man Who Wasn't There, the Regeneration trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize), Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, and the Life Class trilogy (Life Class, Toby's Room, and Noonday). She lives in Durham, England.

Hometown:

Durham, England

Date of Birth:

May 8, 1943

Place of Birth:

Thornaby-on-Tees, England

Education:

London School of Economics; Durham University

Read an Excerpt

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Excerpted from "The Silence of the Girls"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Pat Barker.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Reading Group Guide

1. Briseis’ attitude toward Achilles changes throughout the course of the novel. Did you always find yourself agreeing with her opinion of him? Why or why not?

2. What is most striking about the difference between how Achilles presents himself privately and publicly? In what ways do the two personas merge toward the end of the novel?

3. How did The Silence of the Girls impact your understanding of The Illiad? What did this book add to the story of the Trojan War as a whole?

4. There are many visceral and devastating depictions of war and its aftermath in Silence of the Girls. Which moment struck you as the most heartbreaking or poignant?

5. Honor, both familial and for your city, is a strong theme of The Illiad. How does this theme apply to The Silence of the Girls?

6. Throughout the course of the novel, we see Briseis through many traumatic experiences, including her fall from Queen to concubine. Were you ever surprised by her reactions to these experiences? How would you have reacted to these experiences?

7. The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of The Illiad from one of the minor character’s point of view. If Pat Barker were to write another retelling, whose point of view would you be most interested in reading? How, for instance, might Paris, Helen’s lover, tell his tale?

8. If The Silence of the Girls were written from the point of view of a male minor character, how would that change the story?

Editorial Reviews

07/09/2018
Barker, author of the Booker-winning The Ghost Road, speculates about the fate of the women taken captive during the Trojan War, as related in Homer’s Iliad. Briseis, queen of the small country of Lyrnessus, was captured by the Greek forces and awarded to Achilles, fated to serve him as slave and concubine. Through her eyes readers see the horror of war: the sea of blood and corpses, the looting, and the drunken aftermath of battle. When Agamemnon demands that Briseis be handed over to him, Achilles reacts with rage and refuses to fight, and when his foster brother and lover Patrocles is killed, having gone into battle in Achilles’s stead, Briseis becomes the unwitting catalyst of a turning point in the war. In Barker’s hands, the conflict takes on a new dimension, with revisionist portraits of Achilles (“we called him the butcher”) and Patroclus (he had “taken his mother’s place” in Achilles’s heart). Despite its strong narrative line and transportive scenes of ancient life, however, this novel lacks the lyrical cadences and magical intensity of Madeline Miller’s Circe, another recent revising of Greek mythology. The use of British contemporary slang in the dialogue is jarring, and detracts from the story’s intensity. Yet this remains a suspenseful and moving illumination of women’s fates in wartime. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Eloquent. . . . Speaks to our times while describing those long gone.” —The Washington Post

“Almost Homeric in its brilliance. . . . Masterful and moving.” —The Economist

“Beautiful. . . . It is as if Barker had found an artifact with an as yet undeciphered alphabet among the glittering grave treasures of Homer's epic.” —The New York Review of Books
 
“[A] fiercely feminist retelling of the Iliad. . . . [Barker] sings the rage of Briseis, captive queen.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“The Silence of the Girls is brilliant—fascinating, riveting and blood chilling in its matter-of-fact attitude toward war and those who are its spoils. . . . Wonderful.” —Diana Gabaldon

“Beautifully done.” —NPR

“Brilliant. . . . This is an important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliad but at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present.” —The Guardian

“Barker’s powerful feminist revision of Homer’s Iliad creates a central narrative voice for Briseis. . . . Through her we see the devastating effects of this very male war on the captured women.” —Financial Times

“This book is primo Barker. . . . Powerful. . . . Fascinating. . . . Evocative.” —The Washington Times

“Gives a voice to the voiceless. . . . The Silence of the Girls is a book that will be read in generations to come.” —The Daily Telegraph (London)

“Magnificent. . . . You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers.” —The Evening Standard

“This vibrant retelling of the Trojan War by a woman on the side of the defeated is long overdue. . . .  It’s an absolute pleasure to read for any devoted fan of the Iliad, but equally accessible to those new to the Trojan story; indeed, The Silence of the Girls might make the perfect entry.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“A compelling take on the events of The Iliad. . . . Briseis is flawlessly drawn. . . . Barker makes it all convincing and very powerful. Recommended on the highest order.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A must read. . . . Both lyrical and brutal, Barker's novel is not to savor delicately but rather to be devoured in great bloody gulps.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A suspenseful and moving illumination of women’s fates in wartime. . . . Barker’s hands, the conflict takes on a new dimension.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2018
Following the fall of her city to the Greek army, Briseis, former queen of Lyrnessus, sister city of Troy, is awarded to Achilles as his captive and concubine. She tells her story of slavery, rape, and survival as an insider witnessing the strategies of Achilles and his closest companion Petroclus. Achilles comes to value Briseis to the point of refusing to go to battle when Agamemnon demands her services. The Greek army, demoralized by the loss of their greatest warrior, begins to lose ground to the Trojan forces until Petroclus dons Achilles's armor, fighting and dying in his place. Grief-stricken, Achilles reenters the fray and Troy is conquered. Barker gives the ancient tale of the ten-year-long siege and inevitable fall of Troy new life by presenting the women's point of view, showing women as the most vulnerable, and in many ways, most courageous victims of war. Readers will come away from this brilliant, beautifully written novel convinced that the so-called glorious death in battle is less important than the strength and determination required to survive against all odds. VERDICT Both lyrical and brutal, Barker's novel is not to savor delicately but rather to be devoured in great bloody gulps. A must read! [See Prepub Alert, 3/26/18; "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 8/18.]—Jane Henriksen Baird, formerly at Anchorage P.L., AK

Library Journal

2018-07-02
An accomplished hand at historical fiction respins the final weeks of the Trojan War.For her 14th novel, Booker Prize-winning Barker plucks her direction from the first line of the Iliad: "Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles...." The archetypal Greek warrior's battle cries ring throughout these pages, beginning on the first. The novel opens as Achilles and his soldiers sack Lyrnessus, closing in on the women and children hiding in the citadel. Narrating their terrifying approach is Briseis, the local queen who sees her husband and brothers slaughtered below. She makes a fateful choice not to follow her cousin over the parapet to her death. She becomes instead Achilles' war trophy. Briseis calls herself "a disappointment...a skinny little thing, all hair and eyes and scarcely a curve in sight." But in the Greek military encampment on the outskirts of Troy, she stirs much lust, including in the commander Agamemnon. So far, so faithful to Homer. Barker's innovation rests in the female perspective, something she wove masterfully into her Regeneration and Life Class trilogies about World War I. Here she gives Briseis a wry voice and a watchful nature; she likens herself as a mouse to Achilles' hawk. Even as the men boast and drink and fight their way toward immortality, the camp women live outwardly by Barker's title. Their lives depend on knowing their place: "Men carve meaning into women's faces; messages addressed to other men." Barker writes 47 brisk chapters of smooth sentences; her dialogue, as usual, hums with intelligence. But unlike her World War I novels, the verisimilitude quickly thins. Her knowledge of antiquity is not nearly as assured as Madeline Miller's in The Song of Achilles and Circe. Barker's prose is awkwardly thick with Briticisms—breasts are "wrinkled dugs" or "knockers." And she mistakenly gives the Greeks a military field hospital, which was an innovation of the Romans.A depiction of Achilles' endless grief for Patroclus becomes itself nearly endless.

Kirkus Reviews