Guest review by Sue Purkiss: THE WOMEN OF TROY by Pat Barker

 

"Pat Barker doesn’t let the reader off the hook, doesn’t put a gloss on things. This is what war does, she tells us. This is how it is."

Sue Purkiss writes for children and young people. She has been a Royal Literary Fellow at Exeter and Bristol Universities, and has also taught English and worked with young offenders. Her latest novel for children, Jack Fortune and the Search for the Hidden Valley, is an adventure story set in the Himalayas at the end of the 18th century, featuring plant hunters, a sacred mountain – and its mysterious guardian! For more information, see Sue's website. She also has her own literary review blog, A Fool on a Hill, and is a contributor to The History Girls.

One of the joys of Christmas is that, in my family, we’re very big on giving books for presents. One year this all went horribly wrong, when nearly every book one of us had loving selected had also been lovingly selected by someone else, so at least half of them had to be exchanged – but this year all was well, and this book was part of my haul.

It follows on from Pat Barker’s first book about the Trojan War, The Silence of the Girls, which I had not read before reading this one, though I have now. It’s perfectly possible to read the second one without having read its predecessor – partly, I suppose, because the legend on which both books are based is very familiar: but also because Briseis, the narrator, naturally refers to the past as she takes up her story.

I write books for children, and I think, if I was setting out to write one about the Trojan War and its aftermath, I would seek out a child character – who would need to have some agency: to be a hero in some measure – to make things better. But this retelling concerns war in all its horror and savagery: it’s a bleak tale with few shafts of light. There are certainly heroes, but they all have the capacity for horrifying violence and unthinking cruelty. And, incidentally, the only children in this narrative are girls – because when the Greeks finally conquered the Trojans by means of Odysseus’ wooden horse, they slaughtered the boys. They even, Briseis tells us, killed pregnant women in case the children in their wombs were boys.

Briseis had been a queen, captured when her city was laid waste by the Greeks almost as a sideshow to the main war against the Trojans. When we read retellings of the Greek legends, what we remember and enjoy are the exploits of the famous heroes. Pat Barker, through Briseis, lays bare the brutal treatment of the vanquished by the victors. The Trojan men are almost all slaughtered, while the women are raped and led into slavery. Briseis is relatively fortunate: as a high status captive, she is made available to be a trophy for one of the ‘heroes’. She is chosen by Achilles. In some books, this could have been the prelude to a romance, but there is no romance here. She is a commodity, no more. She only finally receives any consideration when she becomes pregnant with Achilles’ child, and is given in marriage to one of his friends: Achilles knows he is going to die, and knows also that his slave girl could easily be given after his death as a plaything for the ordinary soldiers. Because she bears his son, he doesn’t want that to happen – but only because of that, not because of any tender feelings towards Briseis herself.

The story takes place in the Greek camp on the shores of Troy. The Greeks want to go home, but the winds are against them, and they cannot leave. There is no beauty in this place: it’s windswept and desolate. “On the shoreline, there were stinking heaps of bladderwrack studded with dead creatures, thousands of them…The sea was murdering its children.”

There is another dead creature on this beach. It is the body of Priam, the King of Troy and one of the few characters in this story who retains nobility – until, that is, he is dishonoured by his killer, Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, who drags Priam’s body behind his chariot every day round the walls of Troy, and refuses to allow it to be cremated. One of the Trojan women is determined to put a stop to this, and buries the body, to the fury of Pyrrhus. In a bewildered way he observes that there are only two Trojans in the camp, a priest called Calchas and one of Hector’s brothers, and that neither of these would have defied him in this way, so who can have defied him so flagrantly? He is quite oblivious to the women: they are slaves, and they are women – they simply don’t count. They are invisible to him.

But Briseis renders herself visible to us, because she tells us her story, and those of the other women in the camp: Helen, Cassandra, Andromache – but also the women of lower status, who nevertheless have their own stories, their own individual tragedies. She is courageous and she is kind: I look forward to reading the next book, which I suspect will bring her happiness in some degree.

It’s a wonderful book but a bleak read, harsh in many ways. The language reflects this. Pat Barker doesn’t let the reader off the hook, doesn’t put a gloss on things. This is what war does, she tells us. This is how it is.

How it still is, in many parts of the world.

The Women of Troy is published by Hamish Hamilton

See also: Circe by Madeline Miller, reviewed by Judith Lennox

Guest review by Chris d'Lacey: THE QUEEN OF ALL CROWS by Rod Duncan

"A richly inventive novel that will make the reader think hard about gender and equality."

Chris d’Lacey writes books for children of all ages, but is best known for his series The Last Dragon Chronicles which have sold over four million copies worldwide. The final book in his latest dragon series, Erth Dragons #3 The New Age comes out in April 2018. He is a regular speaker at schools, libraries and book festivals. Way back in 1998 he nearly won the Carnegie Medal. In July 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Leicester for his services to children’s fiction. A long time ago, Linda Newbery persuaded him to write as a 14 year old female called Annabelle, a character he is still proud of to this day…

 One of the most entertaining books I had the pleasure to read in the last few years was The Bullet-Catcher’s Daughter, the first in Rod Duncan’s innovative trilogy about the Gas-Lit Empire, a ‘modern day’ world manacled by the International Patent Office, an organisation who have stalled the progress of technology and in so doing brought about a Peace Accord between most of the nations around the globe. In this, the first book of a second trilogy, the story develops beyond the boundaries of the Empire, where the Patent Office have no jurisdiction. But when an airship bound for America is brought down over the Sargasso Sea and a whaling vessel is also attacked, the Patent Office is forced to respond.

Enter Elizabeth Barnabus, the principal character from the first three books, who is dispatched, at her own request, to investigate. So begins a perilous journey that leads to a clash with a bunch of female pirates, who take Elizabeth to their home world, Freedom Island, where the main hub of the story unravels.

Freedom Island is unlike anything Elizabeth – or indeed this reader – has ever encountered before. At first it seems a highly-improbable habitat. But part of the appeal of Duncan’s writing is his gift of building a fictional world so utterly believable. Indeed, his flawless ability to draw the reader into a fantasy environment with precise and often quite breathtaking prose is arguably his greatest strength. It is the lushness of the writing and the stream of clever ideas, rather than the subtleties of the plot, that make this such an inspiring novel. The descriptions of boats, their machinery, and the battles which come to take place on them are exceptional. A huge testament to the author’s talent is his ability to suspend what one would normally take for granted about ‘modern’ warfare and pitch the reader into an alternative twenty-first century ruckus where pistol shots dent iron chimneys and glinting sabres swing off a sash belt.

Yet, for all its swash and buckle, The Queen of All Crows is much more than a standard pirate romp. The book’s title refers to the canny matriarch who rules Freedom Island – though only women are allowed to live freely there. Little surprise that Elizabeth’s alliances are soon deeply divided. For while she is appalled by the fate of male captives and yearns for the lover she has forsaken for this mission, she is also stirred by the female unity she sees all around her. The question is, can she strike a balance between her conflict of loyalties and find a resolution before war ensues between the Sargassan Nation and the Gas-Lit Empire…? A richly inventive novel that will make the reader think hard about gender and equality.

The Queen of All Crows is published by Angry Robot.