The Silence of the Girls by Pat Baker

I read a review of ‘The Voyage Home’ in the Sydney Morning Herald on the train to work a few weeks ago. I hadn’t heard of the Trilogy, or indeed Pat Baker. But the review piqued my interest. A fierce and chilling conclusion to the excellent trilogy – or words to that effect. So, I screen-shotted the cover, happy that my plan to outsource my memory to my external Samsung-brain was coming along nicely and moved on with my day.

Flashforward a few weeks and I’m at a bookfair in a musty old scout hall in the
Central Coast and Lo! Behold! (Or maybe that should be ‘hark’?) Nestled among every single Lee Child book ever published was not only The Silence of the Girls but The Women of Troy was there too. And only four bucks a throw. Score. Although I had read the Iliad in high school, as part of my classical studies course, it was so long ago that it served little purpose other than being able to pronounce ‘Agamemnon’ on my first encounter with the name*. ‘Briseis’ took a couple of goes, but as it is her story, told mostly from her perspective, you’ll only have to chew on that one a few times through out the book.

I mention all this because The Silence of the Girls requires no pre-reading. You can go in cold, without any understanding of when in history this took place, or even if it did actually take place. Not sure if historical fiction is your bag? Fuggeddaboudit. Retelling of a poem doesn’t float your boat? We’re in the same boat there, buddy.

This is the Story of Briseis, Queen to slave concubine – the power of this book is the perspective used to tell a story of her abject loss, of her corrupt ownership and the tension between the two. Achilles exalts in his prowess, but also is ashamed of his hands and what they have done. Agamemnon is powerful but cowardly and Achilles is fierce but petty. Their struggle, and more broadly the struggle of warring men in this book, is played out across women and things, and women as things.

It’s a violent book. Of course it is, war is violent. And the war related violence is
described with transactional tone and anatomical detail. However the sexual assaults visited upon the concubines swings from harrowing to conversational. The cruelty and debasement writ large occasionally but present in the tiny and humdrum details of life as a slave.

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.

The Silence of the Girls has a clear feminist voice delivered from within this gripping novel, and while it never shouts it makes lout comments on class, ownership and gender.

The chapters are short and the action is fast paced. The whole thing takes place over 8 or 9 days I think, and it felt like I read this book in real-time. 15 minutes snatched here and there gave me vignettes into Briseis’ new reality and her reluctant and painful adjustment to it.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Silence of the Girls and would wholeheartedly recommend it. I can’t wait to dive in to The Women of Troy.

4.1 out of 5 from me. Put it close to the top of your TBR pile.

_{*- Sorry Mr Doyle. I know you tried. Mr Doyle, or Doyler as he was imaginatively named by the students, was my Latin teacher too. Yes, yes – I know. It was that golden era before modern education methods had made it to Roman Catholic Rural Ireland. My high school looked like Hogwarts but instead of Quidditch we had Hurling, and instead of magic we had pederasty.}