Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

48 reviews

cthulhu_calamari's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I read this right after re-reading The Iliad, which is not as great as its expectations. This book gives so much deeper and resonant context and meaning to the Trojan War that it should be considered a required companion to its source. Greek myths were meant to evolve with their audience, and *this* is the form that should be considered canon in the current age. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Grief, Death of parent, and War

Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Confinement

alice451's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Misogyny, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Pregnancy, and War

indigoimpulse's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

i actually really liked the fact that briseis wasn’t a perfect character and that she’s so judgemental of others around her, men and women alike - i feel like given her circumstances you can’t exactly expect her to act like a saint . her narration was very raw which i found gave her personality .

however the book promised me a story from briseis’ pov so i didn’t really appreciate so much of the book being taken up by achilles’ pov - this author writes grief excellently so his sections were great but it kind of took away from the fact that this was supposed to be briseis’ story . i don’t really think you can call this a feminist novel but i enjoyed it nonetheless 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

dismantlethepatriarchy23's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Genocide, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, and War

Minor: Infertility and Miscarriage

milliewhattt's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Opened really strongly, but the just got almost too repetitive. The ending was brilliant though. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, and War

Moderate: Infidelity, Death of parent, and Pandemic/Epidemic

risaleel's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Sexual harassment, and War

Moderate: Alcoholism, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Torture, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Infidelity, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, Trafficking, Grief, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

readinbythesea's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No

5.0

This book was so sad, so heart-breaking and so needed. It was the first book I went all out in annotating and I'm so glad I did. 

I do not recommend this book to anyone who just read The Song of Achilles, though. You will hate Achilles. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Grief, Murder, Sexual harassment, and War

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

ashybri's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Pregnancy, and War

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, and Child death

incrediblemelk's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Barker had already written many books by the time she wrote this, and it feels deliberately written into the recent literary trend for ancient Greek mythological revisionism, which Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2018) were writing into.

I haven't read The Song of Achilles but its treatment of the Achilles/Patroclus relationship would be an interesting point of comparison with The Silence of the Girls, which focuses much more on Briseis, the Trojan queen who becomes Achilles' fateful, fought-over war prize.

Here, Achilles and Patroclus are joked about as gay lovers among the other Greeks, but share a deeper and harder to explain love that stems from some childhood mutual recognition of trauma. Patroclus is basically the nicest of the men Briseis meets, and she comes to love him too (no, not in that way) to the point where their shared loss of Patroclus provokes a kind of rapprochement between Achilles and Briseis towards the end of the book.

In general this is quite a striking and grim picture of life for noncombatants in the Greek war village outside Troy, nine years into the Trojan War, who have been living there long enough to have small children by their captors. Barker vividly summons the misery of enslavement and the different ways in which different women respond to their change in social circumstances.

When we talk of war we imagine soldiers living alone and self-sufficiently in a homosocial environment, but this novel brings to life those whom historians patronisingly call "camp followers" and frame as parasitic opportunists. This novel is full of the textures of domestic life: cooking, cleaning, weaving cloth, tending to fires, serving meals, the problems of waste management and the pleasures of grinding herbs for medicine.

Knowing the mythology and the other literary depictions of these characters made the novel more rewarding – for instance, the way Barker treats the supernatural in both a skeptical and a quotidian way. Briseis doesn't believe that Achilles truly was invulnerable except for his heel – that's clearly propaganda to her – yet we see his nymph mum Thetis emerging from the mist-cloaked sea, and witness the way Hector's corpse miraculously becomes whole every time Achilles tries to desecrate it.

After Chryses, priest of Apollo, is rebuffed when he pleads with Agamemnon to return his daughter Chryseis, Briseis joins in the prayers to the "Lord of the silver arrows" and "Lord of mice", and plague strikes the camp and begins to spread from the sick rats, in what could be either a natural consequence of the filthy conditions, or the god's revenge.

The tragic irony, of course, is that Agamemnon is one of the most superstitious characters, and yet his petty mortal selfishness leads him to fatally offend the gods again and again. Of any of the Greeks, his actions are basically most directly responsible for the carnage of Troy and its long repercussions through Greek life, from the complete destruction of the House of Atreus to the Odyssey.

Briseis witnesses the final captivity of the Trojan royal women and observes that everyone is annoyed by Cassandra's raving prophecy that she and Agamemnon are heading off to their deaths. "Mate, I wouldn't want to have that in my bed," says one soldier – and it's the everyday blokeyness of these men, juxtaposed with the misery they inflict on women, that makes this a striking read.

It's less successful when it leaves Briseis's point of view and adopts that of Achilles himself. I found myself wishing Barker hadn't done this. It illuminates Achilles' character but it seems out of place in a book whose raison d'être seems to be restoring the voice of "silent" women.

BTW I really didn't like the title – it just reminded me of The Silence of the Lambs, but the novel doesn't borrow any of the themes of that story so why piggyback on it? It's based on an ancient ideology that linked women's virtue to their silence and invisibility. The whole Trojan conflict was caused by men but projected onto women, so it was interesting to give voice to Briseis.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Gore, Slavery, Violence, Trafficking, Grief, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Genocide, Rape, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

readingoccasionally89's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

it started off well and the change of perspective (to the women’s perspective) is definitely a plus for me, but it was WORK reading this book, especially in the middle. 
one thing that bothered me aswell was how the relationship between patroclus and achilles is described, especially because i read this after tsoa, (which i definitely liked better.) but that’s just my personal opinion and NOT a flaw of this book. 
i think the intention of this book was to show the hopelessness, troubles and crimes in the trojan war from a woman’s perspective, in which pat barker definitely succeeded, but stil i wouldn’t call this book a favourite. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child death, Death, Domestic abuse, Genocide, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, and War