THE WOMEN OF TROY

Engrossing follow-up to the gritty reimagining of the Trojan War begun in The Silence of the Girls (2018).

Barker opens “inside the horse’s gut: heat, darkness, sweat, fear,” as Greek soldiers wait to see if the Trojans will wheel the wooden horse into the city and seal its fate. We look through the eyes of Achilles’ son Pyrrhus, terrified that he will never live up to the mighty reputation of his dead father. The insecurity behind male violence is a theme from the moment Pyrrhus blunderingly hacks to death Trojan king Priam in front of an altar, a sacrilege that is punished by winds that make it impossible for the Greek ships to set sail for home. Briseis, the enslaved narrator of the previous novel, picks up the story in Chapter 3. Now pregnant with Achilles’ child and married (at his request) to a Greek warrior, she’s well aware that any misstep on her part could send her back to the slave quarters. Trouble stirs there with Amina, who is determined to properly bury Priam’s maimed corpse, left to rot in the open by Pyrrhus. “You’re a girl, Amina. You can’t fight the kings,” Briseis wearily tells her. Her hard-won knowledge that “the only thing that mattered in this camp was power” doesn’t prevent Briseis from feeling sympathy in addition to exasperation for idealistic Amina, vengeance-obsessed Trojan royals Hecuba and Cassandra (now slaves), and even for brutal, conflicted Pyrrhus and other male characters drawn with the same shrewdness. Barker’s blunt, earthy prose strips the romance from Greek mythology, revealing its foundations in murder and oppression, yet she also understands—and conveys—the stark appeal of these ancient stories as she asks us to reconsider them through the eyes of their victims. As with her masterful Regeneration trilogy, the inconclusive close of this volume leaves readers hungry to know what happens next to a host of complex and engaging characters.

Vintage Barker: challenging, stimulating, and profoundly satisfying.