The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1) in Reading with Style

Oct 15, 2019 Kazen rated it liked it

This was my first read for the Booktube Prize finals and I gotta say, my expectations were pretty low. I'm not a fan of Greek mythology, though I have been pleasantly surprised in the past (see: The Rose). And while the book is obviously good enough to make it through to the finals, I haven't heard anything in reviews that made me want to pick it up.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I enjoyed myself, following the actions of Achilles and the Greeks as they try to take Troy. The plot is solidly ...more

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Mar 12, 2019 Claire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

How could I give this book less than five stars?
People who think this is once again a retelling of the Trojan war are partly wrong.
The setting of the book is the Trojan war and the story follows the events in that war.
But here we get a different story. The events are told from the point of view of the women in that war, particularly the POV of Briseis, giving thus word and a voice to the victims (most of all women and little children).
Because of the way women look at certain events , other a ...more

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May 27, 2020 Rosemary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A retelling of the Iliad, the story of the last couple of months in the decade-long siege of Troy, from the point of view of Briseis, the young queen of a city loyal to Troy who was captured by the Greeks and became the focus of a tug-of-war-and-honour between Achilles and Agamemnon.

It makes a great story, and it’s good to have Homer’s perspective broadened. However, despite being told mostly by Briseis, this is still fundamentally about Achilles, the war and the men. Unlike Margaret Atwood’s Pe ...more

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Mar 29, 2019 Megan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, noteworthy-reads-2019, historical-fiction

I could still hear [Priam] pleading with Achilles, begging him to remember his own father--and then the silence, as he bent his head and kissed Achilles's hands.

I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.

Those words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides by the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who k

I could still hear [Priam] pleading with Achilles, begging him to remember his own father--and then the silence, as he bent his head and kissed Achilles's hands.

I do what no man before me has ever done, I kiss the hands of the man who killed my son.

Those words echoed round me, as I stood in the storage hut, surrounded on all sides by the wealth Achilles had plundered from burning cities. I thought: And I do what countless women before me have been forced to do. I spread my legs for the man who killed my husband and my brothers.

An immersive, gripping retelling of the Iliad. Barker makes some very particular and possibly controversial style choices with the modern dialogue and the split between the first-person narration of Briseis and the infrequent dips into Achilles's third-person POV, but these worked for me. I also haven't touched any version of the Iliad for twenty years and didn't even remember who Briseis was, but I didn't need the background knowledge. Barker plunges the reader into the emotional core of the story and provides all the necessary information.

I thought Barker framed her retelling very carefully. Briseis is clear that she is telling the story of Achilles, that in this narrative she functions as part of his story, and she cannot escape this narrative, figuratively or literally: "Because, make no mistake, this was his story--his anger, his grief, his story. I was angry, I was grieving, but somehow that didn't matter." And Briseis is also very clear that this is a story about enslavement and rape. This may be her part in the story, but it is not her story; this was always going to be about the men and their slaughter and their ownership over women's bodies, and the last part is made particularly clear only because Briseis is given the opportunity to tell it as she experienced it.

And that's Barker's project, threading the narrative of enslavement that underpins the war epic.

Readers who hear "feminist retelling" and expect a Strong Female Protagonist to be made out of Briseis, who hope to read a story of the Iliad that is not bound by the emotions of men, will be disappointed, but I thought this was a complicated story of Briseis's humanity under inhumane conditions: "But they were as trapped as he was in a never-ending cycle of hatred and revenge. And if they couldn't free themselves from it, with all the advantages they had, what hope was there for me?"

I thought the writing was beautiful--the descriptions of the seas were numerous and gorgeous--even with the jarring modern idioms that served as reminders that while we may be reading an ancient epic, it's survived only because it remains so evergreen and relevant: the hatred and anger and petty squabbles and egoes, the friendship and the trust, the grief and the loss, the senselessness of mass slaughter, and--in Barker's hands--the physical and emotional work women undertake to survive war. Reading this knowing the contemporary stories of Yazidi women and girls, as well as reading this shortly after War's Unwomanly Face, was an experience. ...more

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May 11, 2019 Ann rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019, rws-spring-19

My dad loaned this to me, saying I would love it. I was skeptical... I used to love mythology but I was more in it for the magical creatures. The heroes eventually bored me, and as I got older the endless rape and punishing of women was something I just could not overlook. But dad was right. This was so much more interesting than the usual take. Its focus on Briseis is so necessary when we have countless tales of Golden Achilles.
More than a “her view” retelling, it’s a beautifully written story ...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Charlotte rated it really liked it

4.5. I loved this but the constant use of “we-ell” “ye-es” and “no-o” in the dialogue was really jarring and ruined the flow. Very odd. Otherwise this was a really well written retelling of the story of Achilles through the eyes of Briseis, who has always been my favourite character. I’d definitely recommend this book.

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