Grief, sorrow, prophecy and death

Pat Barker has been retelling events from Greek mythology in a series of books which I have adored. The Silence of the Girls was about the defeat of Troy told from the point of view of the women who were captured by the Greeks and used and abused by them. The second book The Women of Troy (see my review here) followed up many of the characters in the first book as the Greeks await a change in the wind to allow them to return home. In this third book The Voyage Home the story follows Ritsa, a slave girl who has been abused and is now the maid to Cassandra who is being brought back to Greece as a concubine to King Agamemnon. Cassandra was the daughter of the King of Troy and she has a prophetic gift but no one is prepared to listen to her prophesies which are about death and destruction. Waiting at home is Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra who hasn’t forgotten that her husband sacrificed their daughter so that the gods would give them a fair wind when they first set sail.

As I am woefully ignorant of the Greek myths I didn’t know what would happen in this story, although I suspected that it wouldn’t turn out well for anybody. I found this book absolutely captivating. The story is good but the characterisations, especially of the people who are at the lower end of society, are brilliant. The author has also created an atmosphere of tension in which you know that bad things are going to happen but you don’t know what and you don’t know who will be affected. She fills the story with beautiful language, and a sense of grief and sorrow. She is also good at showing the misuse of power and the helplessness of the powerless.

I like Pat Barker’s novels and have read quite a few of her books but this series is, by far, my favourite. Each book could be easily read separately and I don’t think that they are really a serial but more a series of books set around the same events.