Hey there, everyone! Welcome to another month of reading! Once again, I’m so happy you all have stuck around and joined me on my reading journey. I absolutely love reading along with you all! This April, we will be reading The Silence of Girls by Pat Barker! I am so excited to begin reading this book with you all!

Below is the reading schedule. Again, this is just a suggestion to follow; you can always read ahead. This is so that we know kind of where everyone is at and don’t spoil it for anyone else in case we come upon gasp moments we have to talk about.

I can’t wait to hear what you guys think of it!

The Silence of Girls

by Pat Barker

The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war’s outcome. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis’s people but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis’s perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker’s latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.

Reading Schedule

Join my Book Club

Amazon Chat Room:
http://bit.ly/Read-with-Cyns-Workshop
Storygraph Chat Room:
https://app.thestorygraph.com/readalongs/129787ba-8cbc-4e0f-a96c-ffd0e2d927e6
Discord:
https://discord.com/channels/1182096547811434606/1182097867863765012

Like this?

Don’t forget to follow Cyn’s Workshop on Facebook | Instagram | TikTok |  Twitter | Tumblr | Spotify | YouTube | BookBub | Goodreads | LinkedIn to stay tuned for more like this.

Become a Supporter