Princess Briseis, whose city was occupied by the Greeks who killed her whole family, was bought as a concubine by the famous Akhilleus. Leaving her luxurious life in the past, she witnesses firsthand how the Greeks viewed women as worthless and all the cruel things they did. While the tensions between the Trojans and the Greeks are tense and it is certain that a great war will break out, the only thing Briseis can do is watch what happens. The Silence of the Girls tells the story of the Trojan War through the eyes of Briseis, who is the voice of not the vengeful men like Akhilleus, Odysseus or Agammenon, but of all the women in their shadow.
I think the inner world of the characters is handled very well in the book. While Akhilleus is seen from the outside as an egoist who only cares about his honor and revenge, it is explained that he is actually an emotional character who is afraid of losing Patroklos and harbors his childhood of missing his mother. Briseis, on the other hand, is described as a feminist woman who is stuck in the past with the trauma of losing everything in a single night, who hates how society devalues women.
Author Pat Barker told the story in two books: The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy. She wrote the books through Briseis’s eyes and her thoughts in general. The only thing I don’t like about the book is that the experiences and the pasts of the other female characters are not mentioned in detail. Throughout the two books, Pat Barker only describes the events that the characters are experiencing at that moment.
I definitely recommend this book to those who love history and mythology. Even if you know the story of the Trojan War, it really makes a difference to read the same event from a different character’s perspective.