The Silence Of The Girls

Pat Barker Hamish Hamilton €23

The best-known legend featuring Achilles, the one about his heel, is also the silliest. So says the narrator of Barker’s brisk novel, Briseis – and she should know. As the queen of a country that has been captured by the Greeks in the Trojan War, she is awarded to Achilles as a trophy. She’s already witnessed many atrocities, but there is plenty more grimness in store... There’s a bluntness to Barker’s prose that feels appropriate to this tale of women’s fates during wartime. But if it insists on the importance of bearing witness, it’s also about choosing life.