I love Pat Barker and I really enjoyed her version of the classics in 'The Silence of the Girls', so I was a bit disappointed by this book. It was still interesting and and an easy read, but seemed to be the filler in a series, rather than a complete story on its own. In this sequel the protagonist, Briseis, became more of a plot device rather than the author of her story as in the first book. I'm hoping there will be further volumes, because this one felt like it was devoted to getting through a lot of plot and 'what happened to who?'

I was excited to be allowed to read this, however this felt nothing like the Pat Barker writing I was expecting. I found I didn’t care about any of the characters and the plot felt drawn out and seemed to go on endlessly.

Anyone who became immersed in Pat Barker’s ‘The Silence of the Girls’ is likely to enjoy her follow-on story, ‘The Women of Troy’, centring on Briseis, married to Alcimus and carrying the late Achilles’ child. Now in the aftermath of the Trojan War, Barker continues to give the reader a specifically female view of the times. Nonetheless, we are occasionally allowed the male perspective, most powerfully at the beginning of the novel as the Greek soldiers, crowded, tense and sweating inside the wooden horse wait to see if the strange gift will be accepted: ‘It’s hot in here; the place reeks of resin from freshly cut pine logs – and something very odd has started to happen, because he tastes the resin and smells the heat. The insides of his nostrils feels scorched.’
As ever, Barker’s ability to describe people and places, thoughts and feelings, be they ever so far from contemporary life, bring these ancient characters vividly to life. Whether squashed in the bowels of the famous wooden horse, or on a windswept beach burying a corpse, or in a crowded tent giving birth, the author’s superb use of language ensures that the reader can imagine the atmosphere, the tensions, the fear of being caught by the enemy.
Whilst Barker tells the story of the Trojan women as they wait on calmer seas so that they can be taken to Greece as part of the spoils of war, she doesn’t give the reader a simple ‘sisters united’ picture. Just because these women are connected by race, gender and experience does not mean that they all respond the same way to their plight and the story’s strength lies in the portrayal of these differences. Another engrossing adaptation of a very old tale.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

A follow up to the hugely successful (and brilliant) The Silence of the Girls, The Women of Troy picks up almost exactly at the end of the first book. I really enjoyed The Silence of the Girls, which I read last year so was really excited to read this new addition to the story. At the start I struggled to get into it. I wish I’d reread The Silence of the Girls before I started as I think that would have really helped. Once I started to remember the characters, though, I was really engaged by it and began to really enjoy it. It was lovely to pick up the stories again, and it’s actually made me want to go back and reread The Silence of the Girls again now I’ve finished.

The ending makes me realise (and hope!) that there is a 3rd book in the series to come, which will hopefully finish up the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and think it will be very successful. Thank you for my review copy in return for this honest review.

As a great fan of Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ trilogy, I was intrigued to read her ‘regenerating’ of the Greek victory over Troy in ‘The Trojan Women’.
Despite their triumph over Troy following the 10 year siege, and their sadistic murder of Trojan King Priam, the Greeks are stranded, unable to sail home because of weather conditions.
In the ‘waiting time’, these ‘great’ Greek heroes; including the sons of Achilles, drink, and establish flimsy loyalties, while the captured Trojan women wait together in a compound for the call to satisfy the sexual appetites of Greek men satiated by food and wine, exhausted by uproarious singing and incapable of only the most feeble but humiliating violation of their enemies’ wives and daughters.
Meanwhile, Breseis, mistress of Achilles, comforts and connects the Trojan women in a kind of sisterhood. United, they grow strong, stronger than ‘the men.
Unforgettable opening and a modern, fresh addition to the genre of retelling classical myths.
With many thanks to #Penguin General and #NetGalley for my free download in return for an honest review.

Fans of "A Thousand Ships" and "Circe" will love "The Women of Troy". When I read the classics I was always fascinated by the women, arguably the ones most affected by the war and yet rarely heard from. This is their story, and a captivating one it is too. Thanks for the ARC!

The Women of Troy is a follow up to Pat Barker's other hugely successful novel The Silence of the Girls. I went in expecting more of the same in terms of Barker offering an interesting and nuanced portrayal of the aftermath of the sacking of Troy and to a certain extent this is what we get - however this time around the plot / pacing dragged immensely and dare I say it...this book was pretty boring at certain points. Briseis is still the highlight of this book, though I feel like the other two perspectives; Pyrrus and Calchas feel somewhat a strange choice given the novel is supposedly all about the Women of Troy and their arcs. Perhaps this was just a case of this novel not being the right one for me but I know there will be other readers out there who will enjoy this.

As always with Pat Barker, this was great. I had to have a quick scan through The Silence of the Girls to remind myself of where we'd stopped.

This was a good second outing, providing context of the aftermath of the Trojan war, as the captured women learn their fates and Briseis, first person narrator from The Silence of Girls, navigates an entirely new existence. Captured before the fall of Troy and pregnant with Achilles' son, Briseis is now married, protected and no longer a slave— but she remains tied to the women of the camp, unable to forget when she was them. Her attitude to her pregnancy is also really interesting, and avoids the temptation toward trite maternalism.

I also enjoyed the introduction of Pyrrhus (Neoptolamus), infamous in all the stories that mention him for being hideous, but here Barker offers a different viewpoint, of a man tied to his legacy as Achilles' son, unable to rise from that expectation. All the same, though she makes him more sympathetic, Barker never seeks forgiveness for his actions.

I thought this was a really interesting moment to pick, the ships and men stuck in the camps as they wait for the winds to change, allowing them to go back to Greece. Barker plays well in the stagnation, pushing perspectives against each other to interrogate new ground.

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Penguin for providing me with an ARC. </p>

This novel follows on from the previous work, the prior being set during the events of Homer's Iliad and this novel taking place in the aftermath of the war, starting with the Trojan Horse and ending with the Greeks finally making their voyages home. When I read The Silence of the Girls considered it to absolutely be setting the bar for future mythology retellings to aspire to and I am really happy that the sequel does the same. While I did not necessarily think there needed to be a sequel, the novel more than justifies its existence by the themes it explores, all of which are fascinating, difficult and thoroughly examined.

Let us start with Briseis, the first-person narrator in a majority of the chapters in both this book and its previous one. What Barker does with Briseis is incredibly interesting. Briseis was captured before the sack of Troy so is already part of the furniture of the Greek camp when the newly added female prisoners, slaves and 'conqubines" arrive. She is both a person of authority but also was one of them. But also technically not in the same category anymore. She is pregnant to Achilles' child and Achilles arranged a marriage to one of his advisors before his death ensuring her a certain amount of protection now that elevates her from the women she feels a kinship with. The way Pat Barker depicts this difficult situation is done very well. In a continuation of the themes in the previous novel, Briseis is very conscious of her position relative to other women and that consciousness influences her actions.

The complexity of the depiction of Briseis' pregnancy is incredible. Barker doesn't fall into the trap of motherhood and maternal feelings triumphing over all. Much in the same way Barker allowed Briseis' complicated relationship with Achilles to not simply be a 'rocky romance' (or even a romance at all), Barker allows the difficult plotline to breathe, to exist.

Briseis' pregnancy while always being grounded and personal, also adds an additional element to the discussion of gender in the narrative, in the way that pregnancy is actually the way to achieve stability and security for the women in the camp despite the horror involved.

There is a certain amount of pragmaticism in Briseis' outlook throughout the book, something that I think is one of the strongest but most understated themes. What Barker does extremely well in these books is her portrayal of the banality of grief, outrage and trauma. It is exhausting going through what the characters do, to be so scared, humiliated, victimised and destroyed all the time. They are living nightmares but equally the nightmares have become normal. It is subtle but incredibly poignant.

Achilles is already dead at the opening of this novel, so this time Barker's second POV character is Achilles' only son, Pyrrhus. What Barker did so masterfully with Pyrrhus, was she perfectly demonstrated the yoke he suffers under from the legacy of his father but never exonerates his actions.

Pyrrhus has gained a pretty nasty reputation mythologically, known for the killings of the elderly Priam, several of Priam's children, including his young daughters and even Priam's infant grandson. In this novel, Barker crafts a horrible, unpredictable, arrogant, petulant, child-warrior in the 16-year-old Pyrrhus, never shying away from his terrible deeds while still depicting his desperation for approval and the horrendous insecurity he feels from being Great Achilles' son. Her 'explanations' serve not to invite the reader to forgive him but to contribute to the incredibly complex portrayal much as she did for Achilles previously. I was so impressed with the nuance of her depiction.

With the fall of Troy, we also see many more iconic mythological women entering the camp. Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and Helen all feature heavily in the narrative, each used to explore different reactions to grief and despair. The collective experiences of these women along with the "common women", provides an interesting analysis of gender in these stories.

In the world of Greek mythology, women are stateless. Their nationality, their clan, is that of their husbands, fathers or masters, meaning the way they engage with the world is fundamentally different to those of the Greeks. Geographically they have moved a matter of miles, but as far as the Greeks are concerned there are only two Trojans in the camp; the men.

However, again the enforcement of this notion is not simply imposed on them by the men themselves but reproduced in the women, alienating them from each other. The depiction of Helen is especially interesting in this regard, with Barker's insightful emphasis on the way many women actually appear to blame Helen more than any of the men who have committed the crimes against them. There is a sense of her having asked for it, having deserved everything despite the war being the result of men.

The power dynamics are not taken for granted but are exposed in these novels, even when it comes to the relative privilege women like Briseis and Hecuba have, without negating the things they have been through.

The depiction of the women in the camp is not ever simple, which is exactly as it should be. The situation is not simple. Fundamentally that is what makes these retellings so good. Instead of a vacuous cry for girl power, Barker really analyses and considers the position of women and men in these stories and the result is fantastic to read.

I enjoyed this a lot more than Silence of the Girls. It's a point of view you don't hear from often (I think I read enough historical Greek fiction to be able to say that). You don't need to have a lot of background knowledge on the fall of Troy to to enjoy it or understand it but it took me a little while to get used to the author's voice, I felt it was a little jumpy but that's just personal preference. There were a couple of characters I didn't particularly warm to but the characters and the story make you think about the role women played in Ancient Greece, especially in relation to men so it feels a little timely right now.

I was eagerly anticipating this sequel to The Silence of the Girls, the story of Briseis and the other Trojan women captured in the Greek/Trojan wars. I re-read that first novel in the trilogy before reading The Women of Troy and reminded myself of the historical characters and the powerful voice of Briseis who gave their story back to all those women that history has forgotten.
This new novel starts where The Silence of the Girls ended: Achilles has just died in battle. Briseis is pregnant with Achilles' child and is married to Alcimus, so now in principle a 'free' woman and no longer a slave.
New arrivals in this second episode include Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, who never met his father but arrogantly assumes that the world should view him as the fearless warrior that his father was. There is also an increased focus on Calchas, the Trojan seer who advises Agamemnon while being ridiculed by many of the Greek warriors.
This novel focuses on the long wait of the Greek army to return home following the fall of Troy. The winds are against them setting sail for home and they are stranded in the beach encampment, frustrated and irritable.
Briseis is lonely and unhappy in her life. Her husband is rarely at home and she misses the companionship of her friends from when she lived as Achilles' slave. She works hard to create and maintain bonds with the other 'Trojan women', most of whom are now living as slaves in the women's hut.
Perhaps Pat Barker intentionally made the narrative of a short time stretch out to mirror the feelings of those waiting but I felt there was too much repetition and not enough of the plot and character development that I had seen in the first novel. By the end of this book Briseis is still pregnant and she is about to set sail for a new home. I will read the next part of the trilogy because overall they are well researched and written but I will not be so desperately waiting for the third part to be published.
My thanks to the publisher via Net Galley for a complimentary ARC of this title in return for an unbiased review.

I was absolutely delighted to receive an ARC of The Women of Troy from Netgalley as I loved The Silence of the Girls (which this is the sequel to). The story begins where The Silence of the Girls finishes; the Greeks are waiting inside the Trojan horse ready to ransack Troy. After their success, the Greeks are prevented from leaving for home by a wind which may or may not be the consequence of displeased Gods and the reality of post war society in camp is revealed. For the women of Troy, this reality involves slavery, fear, rape and the murder of their male babies. I really enjoyed reading on from where The Silence of the Girls ended - Pat Barker’s writing is completely engaging. In saying that, The Women of Troy can be read on its own as a stand-alone read. I would say that due to the post-war lull it depicts and the fact that one of the main narrators, Briesis, is relatively safe in her marriage to Alcimus, this story is less eventful and dramatic than its predecessor. If you have not read The Silence of the Girls, please go do it! It also feels like the story as a whole is not finished and there will be (hopefully) a third instalment. I definitely did not feel fully satiated as the story ended and would be delighted if a third book is in the works!

*I want to give huge thanks to NetGalley for providing me with the digital ARC*

3.5
An interesting take on Greek history compared to the stories we already know. What stood out for me the most was the writing style, which was lyrical and absolutely flawless. Pat Barker did an incredible job in presenting the reality after the Troyan War and making women the central characters, not men. We get to see a plethora of HORRIBLE events in the aftermath of the war: suffering, slavery, brutality, rape, murder and many more. However, I have some complaints. I have not read The Silence of the Girls (and here's a big plus: The Women of Troy works as a standalone), so I guess the problem might lay here. I couldn't connect to the characters enough, because I found their portrayal rather shallow and stereotypical at times. Another disadvantage is that the plot had its ups and downs: some parts were powerful and some other were rather weak. Nevertheless, I recommend this book to everyone who read its predecessor or is keen on Greek history. Despite its flaws, it's a solid, feministic novel that may interest the wider public a lot.

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker picks off after the events of "Silence of the Girls". The the infamous Trojen Horse is in fall force and tricks the Trojens. The greeks ransack Troy and win the war. Pyhrrus brutally kills Priam.

We all know what happens next... but only about the famous men. Not how the fall of impacted the women of Troy.
Pat Barker beautifully writes the accounts of these women giving them a voice. We find out more about Amina, Cassandra, Andromache, Hecuba and of course we get an update of Briseis. Who has slowly become one of my favourite greek heroines!

This is a very emotional read for me personally, and an eye opener into the reality that these women face.

Also Pyhrrus is a little brat (but get the feeling that we aren't meant to like him).

Following on immediately from the acclaimed 'Silence of the Girls,' comes Pat Barker's 'The Women of Troy.' In this retelling of the Greek Myth, Barker depicts the fall of Troy and the time following this that the Greek fighters, along with their plunder (women and jewels), remain stranded on the beaches, waiting for the wind to drop.

Keeping to the same format as her previous novel, Barker tells the story from Briseis, Calchas and Pyrrhus' perspectives. She makes the two dimensional hero's of the myths far more complicated motivations for their actions, and makes sure that the women's voices are heard.

Whilst I absolutely loved the 'Silence of the Girls' I was less enamoured with 'The Women of Troy.' This was partly because Barker chose to repeat many aspects of the first story as a recap for new readers, which felt very repetitive. It was also because I felt that keeping Briseis as one of the main narrators was flawed. In comparison Pyrrhus's and Calchas's sections, her narrative felt very flat, which was odd given that Barker's aim was to bring out the stories of the women much more. I was left wondering how much more stunning this novel could have been, if told from Amina, Hecuba and Cassandra's perspectives, rather through Briseis sense of their experiences.

I have to say, this is the first time I've read anything by Pat Barker, so didn't realise that this book was a sequel to The Silence of the Girls until a colleague at work told me. I didn't read the first and feel you could easily read this as a standalone.
This is a re-telling of the aftermath of the Trojan war and told from the perspective of Briseis - who was once the war prize of Achilles.
This is a well written, evocative story of the survival of the women who endured after seeing all they knew and loved destroyed, and are now kept as slaves to the Greek men.
I did enjoy this and will probably read The Silence of the Girls at some point. Thanks to Netgalley and Publisher for the ARC

Following the brilliant “silence of the girls”, the author keeps the story going of the fallen city of Troy, and the women who have lost everything , while their captors wait to return home. As readers we miss the magical presence that is the dead Achilles, but his story lives on, not least in his legacy of brutal strength, but also humanity.. The Trojan women have lost their homes and their men, and no Trojan man can survive, be it man or child. The gods must be appeased if things go wrong, and threat of life is ever present for the women themselves. As a reader I was thrilled to be able to pick up this wonderful and famous mythology.

The Silence of the Girls was one of my stand out books from the last decade, a book which made me reevaluate my girlish and unthinking crush on Achilles (A level classics), a masterclass in how historical fiction can be timely and resonant, with its themes of sexual slavery, violence and survival all too pertinent today all over the world; which made me both eager for and hesitant about a sequel, not wanting the brilliance of the original to be diluted if the sequel didn't live up to expectations. Of course, this is Pat Barker and so I should have known better than to worry.

The Women of Troy (mostly) picks up the story after the fall of Troy, when the winds keep the victors prisoner on the beaches with their spoils, unable to sail home after the ten long years of war, resentments burning deep. Menelaus has taken his wife back to the disgust - and envy - of all those who gave so much to avenge her adultery, Agamemnon marries the Trojan princess, Cassandra, despite her dire predictions of the fate that awaits them both, and Achilles son, Pyrrhus, sixteen with everything still to prove, not least to himself, perpetually in his dead father's shadow, takes Andromache, Hector's widow, as his prize, her father in law and baby son's blood on his hands. her husband's on his father's.

The men of Troy are nearly all dead, a priest and a disgraced son the only exceptions. Every male child was killed, every pregnant woman slaughtered. The women, no matter their former status, are now slaves and prizes and in the Myrmidon camp, princesses and former slaves wait together in the women's hut to be taken away from their burnt city for a life of indenture in faraway lands. Watching over these new slaves and living spoils of war is Briseis, now a wife to one of Achilles generals and carrying Achilles child. She knows what it feels like to lie in the bed of the man who slaughtered your family, she knows what it means to choose to survive and she will do everything she can to help these women do the same. Meanwhile unnatural winds continue to hold the Greeks prisoner, and questions are asked. What have they done to offend the gods and what - and whose - sacrifice will allow them to sail away?

Taut, gripping, wearing its scholarship lightly, The Women of Troy once more puts the women at the heart of this story of war and revenge. Highly recommended.

This is the sequel to Pat Barker’s “The Silence of the Girls” and it picks up where its predecessor finished. For those who love these books, the good news is that, given what happens here and what doesn’t happen here, there must be more to come.

We begin in the Trojan Horse with soldiers crammed in together worrying about whether they will be discovered and massacred or will remain hidden and successfully open the city gates to allow the army in. We know what will happen.

What follows is Pat Barker’s re-imagining of the story of the Greek army stranded on the beach unable to return home. As with the preceding novel, the main narrator is Briseis, but we also spend time with Pyrrhus (Achilles’ son) and Calchas, the priest. The whole novel, especially the first half, is filled with a sense of waiting - this is almost a dead time in the ancient story when nothing can happen: Troy has fallen but the army is stranded by a supernatural wind. What this means is that Barker can focus on the politics, the games that people in power play, the fight for survival for those less fortunate (especially the women). It’s a quieter book than its predecessor, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In The Silence of the Girls, I wasn’t sure about the occasional chapters that skipped away from Briseis as narrator and moved to one of the men. In reality, this was the only way Barker could tell the story because there are parts of it that Briseis simply could not have known about. Here, the mix of narrative viewpoints feels a lot more balanced. The focus is still Briseis and the story of the women, but the inclusion of Calchas and Pyrrhus feels more natural to me.

I am by no means an expert on these stories. In fact, I barely really know the basic details other than what I have pieced together from the many re-tellings that have been published over the last few years. However, even to me, it is clear that Barker is not opting for a simple re-telling. I’m pretty sure the story of Antigone gets re-told here, for example, with different characters. And a key plot point is taken from Priam’s visit to Achilles as related in some detail in The Silence of the Girls. Here, I did go back and re-read that section of the first book and Barker has clearly thought about these two books (and the one to follow) together and laid the foundations in the first.

In the first half of this book, I found myself struggling to get engaged properly. I wasn’t sure if it was due to my lack of knowledge of the original or just that the book takes a while to get going. But the second half of this book is, for me, a lot stronger. It’s not simply that there is more drama/action in the second half, but more that it felt to me as though the book found its purpose.

As the book draws to a close, it is clear that the story is not done. To me, it feels like there has to be a third book. And it also feels like the best approach would be to read all three together as one long book. This book could be read standalone, I think, especially if the reader had a working knowledge of the original story. But I think it works far better read in conjunction with its predecessor.

My thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.

I loved The Silence of the Girls and this continues the story. Although it’s not an entirely female point of view, the reader is shown the world the women live in and how little they count for, no matter how big their actions are. As always from Barker, fantastic lyrical writing.