War is men’s business,” Hector says in the Iliad. Pat Barker begs to differ. The British novelist has made war her subject, winning the 1995 Booker Prize for Ghost Road, the final novel of her remarkable World War I trilogy, Regeneration. In her new novel, The Silence of the Girls, she takes on the foundational war story of the Western canon, giving voice to the muted women of Homer’s Iliad.
It’s a rich premise, since in the Iliad (if not the Odyssey) Homer’s women remain underrealised — static as statues, waiting patiently upon their plinths to be awarded as prizes, enslaved