Pat Barker - The Silence Of The Girls

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought The Silence Of The Girls was quite outstanding. I wasn’t sure whether I would like it, but it turned out to be readable, insightful, humane and by the end was utterly spellbinding.

(If spoiler warnings are needed for a famous 2500-year-old story, be aware that I make reference below to some events in the book.)

This is the story of the end of the Trojan War from the perspective of Briseis, a Trojan noblewoman captured in battle and given to Achilles as a prize of honour. Largely narrated by Briseis herself, this is a brilliant portrait of what it is to be captured and to become someone’s property; to be referred to as “it”, to be silent and perform domestic duties, to be paraded in front of the men as a prize and to be forced to have sex with the man who killed her brothers and destroyed her home. There is also an excellent picture of the reality of the fighting and of the Greek camp on the plains of Troy, and it is all done in a wonderfully human, readable voice so it never becomes turgid or worthy. As a tiny example, of Achilles’s legendary invulnerability, “Invulnerable to wounds? His whole body was a mass of scars. Believe me, I do know.”

Much of the book is, of course, the story of Achilles and it’s a wonderfully insightful study of a proud, emotionally illiterate warrior’s reaction to insult and then to grief. The almost adolescent sulking and its effect are evoked with real understanding, the death of Patroclus is superbly done and very moving, and the portrait of Achilles’s grief and rage quite enthralling. We get a chilling picture of what his subsequent “heroism” on the battlefield really means, and the visit of Priam to plead for Hector’s body was both deeply touching and utterly gripping with Briseis’s voice and perspective binding it all together.

I was hooked from quite early in the book and for the closing third I was completely enthralled.

I think that Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy is among the finest literary achievements of the last half century, so I don’t speak lightly when I say that The Silence Of The Girls is one of her very best. I very much hope that it will be a contender for major literary prizes and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via Netgalley.)