BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Silence of the Girls’ by Pat Barker

OPINION:

THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS

By Pat Barker

Doubleday, $27.95, 291 pages

Never having been a fan of “What if” books — i.e., What if Lincoln, or JFK had lived? What if F. Scott Fitzgerald hated booze?, What if Hemingway was gay?, etc. — I was disappointed to realize that Pat Barker, one of my most favorite novelists, had chosen to depict the Siege of Troy in “The Silence of the Girls.” Boy, did I ever do a quick 180.

I should have known better, because I had gobbled up this Booker Prize-winning Brit’s wonderful WWI “Regeneration” trilogy (“Regeneration,” “The Eye in the Door” and “The Ghost Road”). So I dutifully apologize; I should have known greatness was at hand.

This book is primo Barker. What makes it so good, in addition to the author’s abundant talent, is her point of view. She presents the mythological battle, which in the “Iliad” Homer tells us lasted a decade, not from the viewpoint of the major male figures, such as Agamemnon and Achilles, though they both play large roles in Ms. Barker’s telling, but from that of the women involved — from Briseis, a captured queen, and the women who prepare and serve the food, pour the wine, “man” the hospital tents, and clean the camp and everything else before having to serve as their captors’ concubines.

Formerly the queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, Briseis had watched in horror as Achilles and his army took her city. From the castle, she saw him kill her husband and her brothers.

Shortly thereafter, she is awarded to him as a wartime prize of honor. To her surprise, she finds herself at first admiring, and then actually liking, the god-like Greek. And, apparently, son of a goddess or no son of a goddess, the feeling may be mutual. Patroclus, Achilles’ greatest friend, tells Briseis that one day Achilles will marry her. (On many of these details, Pat Barker is following leads also found in “The Iliad.”)

But then Agamemnon, who led all the Greek forces and therefore outranked even Achilles, decides he wants Briseis for himself, and takes her. Achilles, ever the obedient loyal soldier, cannot object.

But the powerful story line is merely the framework; what make this novel so fascinating are all the interstitial details. For example, right after she describes the camp’s “curious mixture of riches and squalor” by contrasting the wealth attendant upon Achilles’ needs, she moves to ” the other thing I remember: the rats. Rats everywhere. You could be walking along the path between two rows of huts and suddenly the ground ahead of you would get up and walk — oh yes, as bad as that!”

Her recreation of place is equally evocative, as in: “Even after dark, the sky retained a yellowish tinge, seeming to press down upon the camp, trapping the heat inside like a lid on a cooking pot. After the dinner dishes had been cleared away, I sat alone in the cupboard, waiting to be called I went outside and found Patroclus sitting on the veranda steps alone It should have been pleasant sitting outdoors on a warm evening but sweat prickled in every fold of skin, and there was no cooling breeze to free you from it. Huge black insects — not moths, I don’t know what they were — fluttered round our faces and had to be batted away. The rotten smell from the rubbish dump had spread into every corner of the camp — you could even taste it.”

Nits: “The Silence of the Girls” is not an ideal title in that it brings to mind Thomas Harris’s epical novel and the great movie that was made from it — (unless that was intentional and the girls are supposed to be the lambs). The book is not without other small flaws. Ms. Barker’s use of contemporary curse words seems to fit the characters, but will startle some readers, as might several of the necessarily gory bits. All in all, however, the author respects both Homer and history; in her hands the larger-than-life characters become humans, not gods.

Spoiler alert: Readers who expect to see the famous Trojan horse gallop onto the final pages of this book will be disappointed. Instead, on the last page, Ms. Barker writes, perhaps ironically, in the voice of Briseis: “What will they make of us, the people of these unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won’t want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won’t want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won’t want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they’ll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.”

• John Greenya, a Washington writer and critic, is the author of “Gorsuch: The Judge Who Speaks For Himself” (Simon and Schuster, 2018).