Rating: 9.5/10
Favorite Character: Briseis; Most of the male characters in this book end up looking really bad, probably because the book is so true to the original epic instead of making the story softer.
A feminist retelling of Homer’s Iliad, this story is told from the perspective of Briseis. While all the characters are vividly complex, Barker does not soften her portrayals. The men in this story are conquerors, taking the women as slaves and murdering all the men. There is little mercy in this story. In fact, above all, it is a story of survival, as Briseis goes from princess to slave and nonetheless creates a place for herself, never backing down. The concentration in this story, for once, is the women. Not the queens sitting proudly on their thrones, but the women who are brought low; the slaves in the Greek camp, the Trojan women who become slaves themselves when Troy falls, the girls sacrificed for fair winds, the ones whose lives are dismissed as worthless. There is a solidarity between them, as they all help each other deal with their fates. Some of the women choose freedom and death, other choose to live despite being slaves. This story shows how all of the choices these women might make are valid. This book is, above all, as its title says, about the silence of the girls, the ones who are forced to pretend they are voiceless to survive. Yet with each other their voices rise up and we see them through Briseis’ eyes, these survivors who learn to hide their pain.
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