Give me a feminist retelling of almost any story, and I am quite happy. I particularly enjoy the revisionist accounts of the Greek and Roman myths that have come out recently. This book has been on my to-read list for several years. I regret not reading it sooner.
The Silence of the Girls is a fierce, feminist look at the costs of war from the point of view of Briseis, the prisoner given to Achilles as his prize for taking the city of Lyrnessus, located on the Trojan plain. When Agamemnon refuses to give up his prize, Chryseis (the daughter of a priest in the temple of Apollo), the plague besets the Greek military encampment outside of Troy. The Greeks believe Agamemnon’s insult to the priest and his daughter are the cause of the plague. Ultimately, his generals persuade Agamemnon to return Chryseis to her father. Agamemnon does so under duress, and as compensation, he demands Achilles’s prize, Briseis. She becomes a pawn in the struggle between Agamemnon and Achilles. Achilles, an ardent soldier, in protest of Agamemnon’s action, refuses to fight for the Greeks, saying the Trojan War is not his war. He will not allow his soldiers, the Myrmidon, to fight either.
Greece eventually wins the war after ten long years. To quote Barker, “The defeated go down in history and disappear, and their stories die with them.” Therefore, for centuries we have heard only the Greek side of the story. Booker does a bang-up job of turning the story of the Trojan War upside down and showing the other side. She doesn’t spare any of the horrors Briseis and the other prisoners/slaves endured; she is quite open about horrible deaths, gang rapes, infanticide, and other aspects of war that are difficult to deal with. She neither glorifies nor underplays them, but merely presents them as inescapable acts of war.
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The Silence of the Girls (Vintage, August 27, 2019) is available through:
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You can read my reviews of similar books here:
House of Odysseus by Claire North
Ithica by Claire North
Clytemnestra’s Bind by Susan C. Wilson
Divine Might by Natalie Haynes
Clytemnestra by Constanza Casati
Elektra by Jennifer Saint
Circe by Madeline Miller
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