‘Women Of Troy,’ By Pat Barker : NPR

The Girls of Troy opens with warriors crouched, silent, and ready in the stomach of the Trojan Horse, “packed tight as olives in a jar.”

The town is breached, and Pyrrhus, son of the useless hero Achilles, hacks his way to Priam, the King of Troy. It is meant to be his minute of glory, but he fumbles. He manages to kill Priam, clumsily, but not ahead of becoming shamed and taunted by the outdated person. Hiding guiding an altar and looking at his humiliation is a group of ladies.

It can be an apt opening scene: Pat Barker’s two novels of the Trojan war, The Women of all ages of Troy and 2018’s The Silence of the Women, are about females bearing intelligent witness to the ineptitude and brutality of gentlemen. They could be helpless to halt it, but they can at the very least inform a different

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