The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker manages to tell a tale known to most in a new and refreshing way - through the eyes of a woman, a queen, Briseis. After all her family was killed by the famous warrior Achilles, she is forced to stay in his camp, being his slave. And yet, Pat Barker manages to show, that she never loses the sense of her own worth through any of it. The insights into the live of former queens and noble women in a camp where they are treated badly can be quite harsh but I think Pat Barker manages to show what they are experiencing without it being too graphical and too much to bear. A great read and a most welcome retelling through the eyes of overlooked historical figures!

Am appauled by the previous reviews, who have got his book so wrong. The repeated mention of rape highlights how women were most likely treated in those times. A feminist perspective is not one that glosses over or ignores or tries to eradicate or hide from the the pain and suffering of women, but one that portrays this and deals with it in an honest manner. Nor is a feminist perspective one that completely eradicates the existence of the male (so yes, where Briseis is Achilles' slave, Achilles obviously has a big influence on the character and plot). Where the Iliad demonstrates the power and fight for glory of the men on the very public battlefield (glossing over the hideous and violent crimes against women), this book demonstrates the strength and resillience of women, who are ever fighting their own battles in thier private lives. It sheds light on such hideous and violent crimes that are otherwise disregarded by the male author and narrator. The female characters do not perpetuate this anti-feminist, idiolised image of the strong, independent, feisty, feminist woman, but are portrayed as human; with flaws and doubts and fears, as real women are. This doesn't make them weak or not feminist; it finally offers an honest portrait of a woman, a human being, not some idealised, unattainable idea of what the female should be. If you are looking for a feminist retelling, this is ome of the best. If you've read the Iliad, it highlights and opens doors to completely new interpretations. It also sheds light on many of the important female traditions, such as weaving, healing and lament, which has not had the same amount of attention in popular culture and academic study.

Vor zwei, drei Jahren habe ich Das Lied des Achill von Madeline Miller gelesen und absolut geliebt und ich denke, ich bin nicht alleine, wenn ich sage, dass ich griechische Mythologie seit meiner Kindheit faszinierend fand. Wer sich also für griechische Mythologie generell und den trojanischen Krieg im spezifischen interessiert und auch gerne mal altbekannte Geschichten neu betrachtet und hinterfragt, sollte The Silence of the Girls auf jeden Fall mal in die Hand nehmen :) „What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.”

I saw this book on one of the YouTube channels and was pretty motivated to read it. The story is narrated (mainly) from the perspective of Briseis who became Achilles' prize after he helped to take her native city Lyrnessus. It's an eulogy for Archilles, as it is a case in "The Song of Archilles"! What I didn't quite like about this book was the choice of words at some places...

On Valentine’s Day this February, another dance demonstration organized by One Billion Rising took place at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, to the end the violence against women and girls. The amazing artist and singer Jocelyn B. Smith took part, and at a concert later that night, still in her One Billion Rising hoodie, she said: “Don’t be silent. Always remember - you have a voice!” Rewind three or four thousand years in history. What must it have been like for women? What was it like when your city was taken, ransacked, all men and boys killed and all girls and women taken as slaves? In her novel, Pat Barker gives a voice to Briseis, bed-slave to Achilles. Both achingly beautiful and achingly brutal, it seems like a variation of the Greek theme picked up by Madeline Miller in her wonderful novels “The Song of Achilles” and “Circe”. Pat Barker, well-known for her First World War Regeneration trilogy, is not leaning on mythology and fantastic elements quite as much, but rather on the savagery and gore. The second half of the book was told from the male perspective a little too much. One lovely passage that reminded me of “Circe”: “Time played curious tricks, too: expanding, contracting, burrowing back into itself in the form of memories that were more vivid than daily life. Particular moments – like the few minutes I’d spent staring at the stone – expanded till they felt like years, but that would be followed by whole days that drifted by in a haze of shock and grief.” A remarkable novel about the demands made on women and their incredible strength.