Auf ein Miniaturbild klicken, um zu Google Books zu gelangen.
Lädt ... The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy, #1) (Original 2018; 2018. Auflage)von Pat Barker
Werk-InformationenDie Stille der Frauen von Pat Barker (2018)
» 15 mehr Books Read in 2019 (156) Books Read in 2021 (874) Top Five Books of 2022 (500) Historical Fiction (491) THE WAR ROOM (279) Books Read in 2018 (2,853) The Trojan War (14) Five star books (1,614) Lädt ...
Melde dich bei LibraryThing an um herauszufinden, ob du dieses Buch mögen würdest.
[a:Pat Barker|4000|Pat Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1539120639p2/4000.jpg] has written the story of the [b:The Iliad|1371|The Iliad|Homer|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388188509l/1371._SX50_.jpg|3293141] from the viewpoint of a woman, the slave and former queen, Briseis, won for his slave by Achilles. Once the wife of King Mynes of Lyrnessus, an ally of Troy, Achilles slew Mynes and the brothers of Briseis, then received her as his war prize. She and Achilles later have a child, but it is the battles and machinations of Agamemnon and the other Greek kings as well as Priam the Trojan ruler which create much of the theater of this story. Barker's writing skills shine, the pace is rapid in spite of the huge cast of characters (I wrote them down) and emphasize the suffering of all during wartime as Briseis bathes the dead and supports the vanquished while mourning her own losses. Weer een prachtige Pat Barker, deze keer vanuit het standpunt van Briseis, het verhaal van wat er gebeurt met de vrouwen van een veroverde stad: de mannen en jongens worden gedood en de vrouwen en de meisjes als slaven verkocht of weggegeven. Briseis wordt aan Achilles gegeven, Patroclus is de enige man die echt aardig voor haar is. Ze gaat vaak stiekem. Zwemmen, Achilles doet datt ook, dan is hij even bij zijn moeder Thetis. Briseis ruikt daarna naar de zee en Achilles wordt daar helemaal gek van. Door van Achilles te zijn heeft Briseis nog niet eens zo’n slecht leven als vele anderen, minder jonge, minder mooie vrouwen van “mindere” afkomst. Agamemnon eist haar op een dag op voor zichzelf. Achilles is dan zo woedend dat hij niet meer mee vecht. Het gaat hem niet om het meisje, maar hij is in zijn eer aangetast. Als de Pest uitbreekt gaat Patroclus als Achilles vechten, hij wordt door Hector gedood. Achilles doodt en onteert Hector, en sleept hem achter zijn paard aan. Pas als Priamus komt smeken om het lichaam van zijn zoon geeft Achilles hem terug. Het verhaal eindigt met de val van Troje (zonder het verhaal van het paard). De jongste dochter van Priamus, Polyxena wordt “voor Ajax” geofferd door Agamemnon. Andromache wordt aan de zoon van Achilles, Phyrrus, gegeven, Cassandra aan Agamemnon, Achilles heeft Briseis nog laten trouwen met Alcimus, omdat ze dan een deel van leven heeft, en ze zwanger is. This novel is a retelling of the Illiad and focuses on the last few weeks of the Trojan war leading up to the sacking of Troy, the slaughter of its male inhabitants and the enslavement of its women. It begins with the viewpoint of Briseis, a pivotal character in the Illiad but one not given her own voice. Queen of Lyrnessus, a satellite city of Troy, she is handed to Achilles as war price for his part in the sacking of her city, which included the slaughter of all the men and boys. After witnessing the cutting down of her brothers and husband by Achilles, she must endure being his bed-girl which includes rape, and later on more abuse by Agamemnon, the King in charge of the Greek army with whom Achilles had a falling out. I found the earlier parts more interesting because as the book progresses there are sections from the viewpoint of Achilles. Possibly this is to include events and conversations which Briseis could not witness, being both female and a slave. It develops Achilles as a layered character with his own demons and throws more light on the devoted relationship between him and Patroclus, a King's son who, as a boy, killed another boy in an argument over a game of dice and was sent to become Achilles' companion. Patroclus, too, has more sides, one of them being that he is the only man in the camp who is kind to the female captives. There is a deliberate anachronistic use of British slang and rude rugby songs in the book which on the whole I didn't mind but which occasionally jarred. I had hoped for more on how the female captives interacted. Maybe the title is a clue, because around the men the slaves have to keep quiet and among themselves they talk more about the men, probably because the men have the power of life and death over them. As Briseis herself says bitterly, she is part of Achilles' story. Also despite the overall blood-and-guts realism, the story veers into supernatural territory with the inclusion of Achilles' sea nymph mother - other people see her so she isn't some psychological quirk of his - and the transformation of Hector's corpse. The cover of this edition is also very striking. On the grounds that I enjoyed this retelling more than 'The Song of Achilles' by Madeline Miller, enough to order the follow-up, I'm awarding this an additional star and give it a 4 star rating. keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Gehört zur ReiheWomen of Troy (1) AuszeichnungenPrestigeträchtige AuswahlenBemerkenswerte Listen
"From the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy comes a monumental new masterpiece, set in the midst of literature's most famous war. Pat Barker turns her attention to the timeless legend of The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War. The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, who continue to wage bloody war over a stolen woman--Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman watches and waits for the war's outcome: Briseis. She was queen of one of Troy's neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece's greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles's concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army. When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and cooly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position to observe the two men driving the Greek forces in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate, not only of Briseis's people, but also of the ancient world at large. Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war--the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead--all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives--and it is nothing short of magnificent"--
"The Iliad, as experienced by the captured women living in the Greek camp in the final weeks of the Trojan War"-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
Aktuelle DiskussionenKeineBeliebte Umschlagbilder
Google Books — Lädt ... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt:
Bist das du?Werde ein LibraryThing-Autor. |
From the beginning of the book, when her city is being raided, when he kills her brothers, Briseis hates Achilles. This does not change when she's given to him as his reward for valor, but she knows her hatred doesn't matter. She'll be expected to serve at his table and be used in his bed anyways. She has nowhere to run, and they both know it. Although deeply unhappy, she becomes accustomed to her routine with Achilles, becoming close to Patroclus and his own slave girl, as well as the other women of the camp, from whom she hears tales of Agamemnon's cruelty. She's terrified when he takes her, though he mostly ignores her, and is not particularly happy to be returned to Achilles when she eventually is. It's not a pleasant lot, to be an object, a bargaining chip, instead of a person.
Dehumanization, the way it crushes the spirit, is the central theme of the novel. Briseis goes from being a queen in her own right to no more than chattel. The injustice of being expected to serve as a sex object for the men who killed your loved ones and destroyed everything you once held dear is a note struck consistently throughout, though Barker does a good job of keeping it from being the only note or making it feel unduly repetitive. She portrays a range of experiences through the camp women, from those beaten and abused by their captors to those who do their best to work themselves into the good graces of the men who keep them, including by bearing their children. I appreciated that Barker did not fall into the common trap of historical fiction around young women...so often they're written as anachronistically defiant and spunky, but Briseis and her fellow captives feel grounded in reality. Barker doesn't engage in any sort of rhetorical flashiness; rather, the book is an elegant plea to consider the historical voices that we've never gotten to hear.
The lack of flash, though, also works against the book. It's rooted in traumatizing experiences, and if I'm being honest, the lack of a big personality for Briseis or much in the way of hope for her can make it feel like a slog. I imagine this explains why the narrative occasionally leaves the first-person perspective of Briseis and engages in third-person narration of Achilles and Patroclus instead, to try to break out of the rut of Briseis's despair. I don't think it really works...in a novel otherwise focused on giving the viewpoint of the forgotten, focusing on the star characters of the familiar narrative doesn't add anything. It certainly doesn't do anything new or particularly interesting with these characters, leaving their bond open to interpretation. If you want an Iliad retelling that's less technically proficient but has more heart, I'd recommend Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles. The Silence of the Girls, while certainly not a waste of time, doesn't really enlighten or entertain. ( )