"So many pebbles on that beach - millions - all of them worn smooth by the sea's relentless grinding, but not this one. This one had stayed sharp."

"The death of young men in battle is a tragedy - but theirs is not the worst fate."

The novel tells the story of Trojan women enslaved by the Greek soldiers during the sacking of the city of Troy. We all know the famous "beauty that launched a thousand ships" story of Helen, Paris and Menelaus. But here, a story of a less-though-of woman is presented. Briseis, queen of Lyrnassus, is taken as a slave after her city is destroyed and she is given as a gift to Achilles to be his bed-girl. That night, terrified at having been given as a plaything to a man who she had witnessed killing her brothers and her husband, she surrenders her body but tries to keep her mind sharp. "He fucked as quickly as he killed" she says of the famous hero, "and for me it was the same thing. Something in me died that night."

Endless days of serving the soldiers, helping out in the camp hospital and then nights spent in his bed are presented so vividly, I felt as if I was living them. I could feel her tension, the battle raging inside her - she had to help these monsters, her enemies and inside she felt as if she was losing pieces of herself each day. 

"'Silence becomes a woman.' Every woman I've ever known was brought up on that saying."

I'm not going to retell the whole storyline. You may already know it from reading the original, or some parts may be new to you. My intention here is to tell you how this story made me feel. And it made me enraged. I am furious at how easily we forget the sacrifices of women, how easily we silence them and invalidate their stories. It always felt to me, even in my own life, while listening to the stories of my ancestors, that people believed women were made to suffer. Somehow, suffering was a burden they had to bear and they had to do it silently. But the stories everyone remembers and tells are the stories of brave men and their sacrifices. Why are theirs so much more regarded and respected? Why is a man who lost his life braver than a woman who lost her husband, her sons, her daughter to rape, lost herself? And then bore it silently, believing it was just her lot in life for being born female...

Another part of this novel that I was drawn to was the characterization of Achilles. He is a mighty warrior and a fierce and respected leader of his Myrmidons. But he is also "not a man at all but an angry child". His mother, the nymph Thetis, abandoned him and his father when he was a small child and this caused him to stop growing. He was so dependent on her that his development simply stopped. Later on, Patroclys came into his life and took up the role his mother had. But it was never the same... He never truly developed, and all his skill at killing was borne out of anger for his mother's abandonment. In a small window we get into Thetis's thoughts she says he grew up "saturated in her grief" because she knew he was mortal, and mourned him from his birth. 

"Yes, yes, but what next? And suddenly he knows: nothing, nothing comes next, because that's it, that is the end - it's been there all along, only he hasn't been ready to see it."

Achilles remained a child. When Agamemnon takes Brieis away from him, after giving his "prize" back to her father, he refuses to help with the fighting because of the insult and the situation becomes dire. He won't go back to the battle even after allowing his soldier to go back, not even to inspire them and just watches from a distance. And, finally, the way he goes from day to day after Patroclys's death is so reminiscent of his life when Thetis left - he expresses his grief as he did when he was a child of six. No eating, no sleeping... he merely exists, shuffling from day to day, refusing to burn his friend's body because he cannot admit to himself that he is lost.

In the end, this is the story we don't hear too often - the story of humanity. The story of real people as they were during the war. Not the heroics, not the battles (those are not described) just the aftermath of destruction, of the hurt people cause each other, of the way we strip others of their dignity just because they are on some arbitrary "other side". The novel acknowledges this as well, mentioning that aeons later people will only talk of the heroes, no one will mention the atrocities, the rape, the humiliation, the monstrous killings... Just the glory of the victors, their bravery and their honor told by men over and over again.

But, luckily for us, the women are starting to tell their stories as well. No more silence of the girls.