I grew up reading and re-reading the Classics Illustrated version of Homer's Iliad. Pat Barker in her new novel The Silence of the Girls (#785) has brought a portion of that epic painfully and resoundingly to life. Here are the characters you remember: Achilles, Patroclus, Agamemnon, Nestor and Ajax, Priam and Hecuba, but center stage here is Briseis. Briseis, who was awarded as a prize of war to Achilles, yet whose very presence in the Greek camp caused a rift between Achilles and Agamemnon which nearly cost the Greeks the war.
Her story didn't matter to Homer, but her fate when her walled city is captured by Achilles is the fate of women in war. Men are slaughtered, but women have to live in the aftermath. Briseis' story sheds a whole new perspective on the Trojan War. What a remarkable achievement by Ms. Barker. She maintains the bones of the epic, even the presence of the gods in the conflict, yet the heroes here are mostly human in their scale. Except for Achilles. But then, his reward from the gods is eternal glory. Briseis manages to survive to tell their remarkable tale.
If you are at all interested in the classics of Greek literature, or if you simply love a compelling story masterfully told, don't miss The Silence of the Girls.
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