The Spoils of War

 Pat Barker's The Women of Troy (2021) picks up where The Silence of the Girls (2018) ends.  Achilles, the hero of the Trojan War, is dead. Troy has fallen and the city is in ruins. King Priam has been brutally killed, likewise all the boys, men and pregnant women in Troy. The Trojan women have been gathered and escorted back to the Greek camp where they will be divided up among the warriors as slaves. 

The Greeks want to return home but the winds prevent them from leaving the bay. Without a battle to fight, the men are restless and sparring among themselves. Pyrrhus, Achilles' teenage son, fears he will never live up to his father's legacy despite killing Priam. He longs for recognition and respect.

Our main narrator, Briseis, pregnant with Achilles child, has more freedom than she did in the first novel. Achilles married her to his friend Alcimus, so that she and the child would be cared for. Despite her new status, Briseis know she is one mistake away from returning to slavery, or worse. She supports the women of Troy - Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and more - to become accustomed to their new roles in the camp. 

Amina, a stubbornly devout young woman is determined to bury King Priam and perform funeral rites. She sneaks off at night and attempts to bury his corpse. This act of compassion is considered a direct affront to Pyrrhus and he is determined to find out who defied him, setting the action of this story in motion.

Like with her previous novel, Barker presents an unvarnished view of the brutality of war. She gives these invisible women a voice and we see the world from their perspective. Again it is the women who are the real heroes - their resilience, intellect and camaraderie in the face of devastating trauma gives them strength the warriors around them could only dream of. 

I really enjoyed The Women of Troy, even though it lacked the sense of urgency and movement that kept the story moving in The Silence of the Girls. I know there will be a long wait, but I look forward to Barker's next instalment to see what happens to Briseis next.

Booker Shortlist 2021

The Shortlist was announced today for the 2021 Booker Prize. The thirteen titles on the Longlist have been whittled down to six:

• Anuk Arudpragasam - A Passage North (Sri Lanka)
• Damon Galgut - The Promise (South Africa)
• Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This (USA)
• Nadifa Mohamed - The Fortune Men (UK)
• Richard Powers - Bewilderment (USA)
• Maggie Shipstead - Great Circle (USA)

Chair of the Booker Prize judges, Maya Jasanoff described the shortlist as follows:

"Some are acutely introspective, taking us into the mind of a Tamil man tracing the scars of Sri Lanka's civil war, and an American woman unplugging from the internet to cope with a family crisis. Some enter communities in the throes of historical transformation: the Cardiff docklands in the early years of British decolonisation, and the veld around Pretoria in the last years of apartheid. And some have global sweep, following a mid-century aviator in her attempt to circumnavigate the planet, and a present-day astrobiologist raising a son haunted by climate change."

This is an interesting shortlist without an obvious front runner.  I haven't read any of these books yet (as always, whenever I read a longlisted title it is guaranteed not to make the shortlist!).   But I really want to read the titles by Nadifa Mohamed, Maggie Shipstead and Anuk Arundpragasam.  

The reactions of authors are captured in the shortlist announcement released by the Booker Prize.

The Winner of the Booker Prize, and recipient of £50,000, will be revealed in November. Better get reading!

The Survivors

In 2019 the Women's Prize Shortlist contained two novels that were feminist retelling of ancient myths - Madeline Miller's Circe and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls (2018). I acquired both novels and read Circe last year - absolutely loving the fresh take, moving the narration to women who were on the periphery and making their thoughts and feelings central to the storytelling. 

My initial plan to read Barker's The Silence of the Girls fell apart as the pandemic shifted my focus and impacted my reading, but I picked it up this week and devoured it - utterly transported to the frontlines of the decade-long Trojan War and engrossed in the masterful storytelling. 

Mirroring the plot of Homer's The Iliad (circa 8th century), The Silence of the Girls is primarily narrated by Briseis, who becomes a trophy of war when Achilles sacks the city of Lyrnessus and takes her as his prize. Once privileged and married to the king's son, Briseis finds herself Achilles' slave and is bitterly aware of her new position: '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'. Such is the fate of women who survive the battle.

Only nineteen, but wise beyond her years, Briseis is a keen observer, learning Achilles' moods and studying his relationship with his beloved Patroclus. She knows that if she falls out of Achilles' favour he will hand her over to the soldiers to be raped and perhaps killed. So she keeps her head down, her mouth shut, and does all that she is asked by her master.

Achilles is a legendary warrior and his skills are needed to defeat Hector and claim the city of Troy. But he falls out with Agamemnon and ends up losing Briseis who is handed over to Agamemnon as his slave. Achilles then refuses to fight further battles alongside Agamemnon - a decision which ends up claiming the lives of Achilles' men and ultimately leads to his downfall. 

Barker is a skilled writer who brings the battlefield to life. By telling the story through the eyes of women, the reader is not presented with heroism and glory, but rather the immeasurable loss and brutality of war. The women are silenced, mostly unseen, yet essential in this world - as nurses, seamstresses, cooks, servants, sex slaves. Survival is their only object, knowing that one false move will result in brutality or death. 

Despite her outward subtlety and deference, Briseis is formidable. She survives by remaining silent, forging friendships with other captured women and finding moments of solitude. But she never loses sight of the volatile position she is in. While she is paired with Achilles and later Agamemnon, great figures in this war, she knows this is not a romance and questions how some of the trophy wives have come to have feelings for their captors, doubting she could ever feel that way. In some ways she has accepted her fate, but fear is always present as she cautiously navigates her way in this world.

Barker has given voice to the real heroes of the battle, the women who survived. While reading, I also listened along to the audiobook brilliantly performed by Kristin Atherton, enhancing my experience of the novel.

I am thrilled that there is a sequel, and that Pat Barker's The Women of Troy (2021) picks up where The Silence of the Girls left off. Guess what I am reading next?

Women's Prize Winner 2021

The winner of the 2021 Women's Prize for fiction has just been announced. I am so thrilled that Susanna Clarke has been recognised for her magnificent novel, Piranesi.

The live ceremony was broadcast online with Chair of Judges Bernadette Evaristo announcing the winner. Evaristo said:

“We wanted to find a book that we'd press into readers' hands, which would have a lasting impact. With her first novel in seventeen years, Susanna Clarke has given us a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy which melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be. She has created a world beyond our wildest imagination that tells us something profound about what it is to be human.”

Susanna Clarke received the £30,000 prize and the award ‘Bessie’, a limited-edition bronze figurine. Clarke is probably best known for her first novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell (2004).

I absolutely loved Piranesi and found myself engrossed in the fantastical world Clarke created. I am so happy that she received this award. Read my review of Piranesi here.