The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The Silence of the Girls: A Novel by Pat Barker --- 291 pages

Booker Award winner Pat Barker turns her attention to Homer's Iliad retold from the viewpoint of the captive Trojan women who have become the property of the Greeks, doing the hard work of the camp by day and servicing their captors by night.

Briseis, the former queen of Lyrnessus, is the narrator. In the Iliad, Briseis famously becomes the prize or trophy awarded to Achilles for his prowess in battle. Until she is snatched away by the spiteful King Agamemnon, and Achilles furiously declares he will fight no more for the Greeks. In the Iliad Briseis has no voice, no will of her own.  In Barker's retelling, men may enforce that silence, but among themselves the women find ways to reclaim their sense of worth and self.

A wonderfully compelling tale.

Click HERE to read a featured interview with the author in Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read an article from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from the Guardian (UK).

Click HERE to read the review in Kirkus.

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller --- 378 pages

This is Miller's first novel, and shows great promise as an exciting new voice in historical fiction. With solid scholarship in the classics combined with a background in theater, Miller retells one of the great mythic tales of ancient Greece, the Iliad of Homer, and most particularly, the iconic tale of the hero Achilles --- "best of the Greeks" --- and his beloved companion, Patroclus.

At least one reviewer has already invoked a comparison with Mary Renault. While it is too early to make such an assertion, on the basis of a single novel, this is certainly a writer of enormous potential.

Miller takes Patroclus as her narrator, giving a new perspective on the old tale, and recreates with deft details both the brutality and the beauty of the ancient world. Because western civilization prides itself on its Greek and Roman heritage, we assume we know this world and these people, but Miller shows us a world at once familiar and alien to our modern sensibilities. Most hauntingly she shows us the fatalism of that world, where men struggle mightily to outwit their doom yet know they cannot escape it in the end. Still, it is the struggle that defines them as human, and in the end, even the unforgiving gods acknowledge that persistence.

An absorbing story, beautifully written, with characters that live and breathe on every page.