Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Silence of the Girls

Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

39 reviews

sarahsbooklife's review against another edition

sad slow-paced

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

3.0

I like this story but I struggle to put my finger on what I did and didn't like about this book.
Maybe it was the characters or the writing or the story itself. But I struggled to regain interest in this book each time I stopped reading and put it down.
I think I liked this book because I like Greek myths and legends. It was quite interesting to read about a different side of the myth that goes into what it was like for the women that were taken as slaves by the Greeks.
It's an interesting take on a classic Greek tale.
But it's not the epic story that some people make it out to be. It felt a little lacklustre to be to be honest.

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nialiversuch's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.75

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asternautt's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

4.5

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withlivjones's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

3.0

A retelling of the Trojan War that provides a particularly graphic and brutal depiction of the Greek army as the bloodthirsty villains instead of the heroes presented in the Iliad.

I tried and failed to read this book twice before finally getting through it. It is a very slow-paced book that only really picks up in the second half. What really threw me off, however, is that while this book is marketed as being narrated by Briseis, there are many chapters (starting from about a third of the way in and gradually getting more frequent) where the point of view suddenly shifts to some of the men - most often Achilles, but also at points Patroclus and Priam. While this does provide an interesting perspective of the war, since few writers have dared to examine the depths of Achilles’ psyche in such detail, it was really not what I was expecting from a book that wanted to tell a more female-focused version of the myth. The dilemma is this: women are notoriously silent in Greek mythology and hardly ever have the freedom to tell their own story, so why, then, in a novel where Briseis is presented as reclaiming her own narrative, is a male perspective inserting itself into said narrative just like they have done for the last two thousand years?

The novel is still very enjoyable and well-written, and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Greek mythology, but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed that I seemed to be reading a different book to the one that was advertised.

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