The Silence of the Girls
CBC Books | | Posted: August 14, 2018 6:49 PM | Last Updated: April 29, 2019
Pat Barker
From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war comes a reimagining of the most famous conflicts in literature — the legendary Trojan War. When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis's old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.
The Trojan War is known as a man's story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home and spirited across the sea. But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead? In this magnificent historical novel, Pat Barker charts one woman's journey through the chaos of the most famous war in history, as she struggles to free herself and to become the author of her own story. (From Penguin UK)
The Silence of the Girls is shortlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction.
From the book
Great Achilles. Brilliant Achilles, shining Achilles, godlike Achilles . . . How the epithets pile up. We never called him any of those things; we called him 'the butcher'.
Swift-footed Achilles. Now there's an interesting one. More than anything else, more than brilliance, more than greatness, his speed defined him. There's a story that he once chased the god Apollo all over the plains of Troy. Cornered at last, Apollo is supposed to have said: 'You can't kill me, I'm immortal.' 'Ah, yes,' Achilles replied. 'But we both know if you weren't immortal, you'd be dead.'
Nobody was ever allowed the last word; not even a god.
I heard him before I saw him: his battle cry ringing round the walls of Lyrnessus.
We women – children too, of course – had been told to go to the citadel, taking a change of clothes and as much food and drink as we could carry. Like all respectable married women, I rarely left my house – though admittedly in my case the house was a palace – so to be walking down the street in broad daylight felt like a holiday. Almost. Under the laughter and cheering and shouted jokes, I think we were all afraid. I know I was. We all knew the men were being pushed back – the fighting that had once been on the beach and around the harbour was now directly under the gates. We could hear shouts, cries, the clash of swords on shields – and we knew what awaited us if the city fell. And yet the danger didn't feel real – not to me at any rate, and I doubt if the others were any closer to grasping it. How was it possible for these high walls that had protected us all our lives to fall?
From The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker ©2018. Published by Hamish Hamilton.