The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

Title: The Silence of the Girls
Author: Pat Barker
Publisher: Doubleday
Rating: 📖📖📖 / 5


The Silence of the Girls, different look into the Trojan War, follows the story of Briseis a former queen of a neighboring city to the infamous Troy. After her city is ransacked, she becomes the famous Achille's slave. This is often the fate of women during war; a fate that isn't often written about and often forgotten in history. Briseis finds herself in the middle of a personal fight between Greek leaders while struggling personally with her role in the world.

When I was choosing what books to get from my monthly Book of the Month subscription, reviews for The Silence of the Girls were pretty good. Being a sucker for historical fiction and the ancient world, I thought I would give this book a try. Though I have to say I was not overall impressed with this story. I really wanted to like it. A story like this doesn't often make its way onto the page. It started off well enough, but never seemed to really find its footing. Briseis is an interesting enough character but never has any depth. While I felt for her, I didn't really like her. I don't know if it's because there isn't really any history to base the character on or if Barker didn't do enough to develop the character.

Barker's writing is strong which helps the story. Barker obviously did a good deal of research to paint a picture of what could have been happening in a war camp during the Trojan War. And I must admit that the writing does make you feel like you are there. I could almost smell what it must have smelled like (ie: burned bodies and...crap). But it does struggle from conflict by way of point of view. It goes between Briseis' point of view and a sort of third person view but as Achilles. I often had to figure out who's eyes I was reading the story from. Unfortunately it took away from the story for me. I also felt it dragged in the middle and I often found myself skipping to the end of the book to figure out how many pages I had left to go.  Overall, it is a good story even if it wasn't my favorite to read. I do recommend it if you have any interest in this time period and would like a different point of view on the Trojan War.

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