The Silence of the Girls

261 Pages·2018·2.6 MB·English

by  Pat Barker

ALSO BY PAT BARKER
Union Street
Blow Your House Down
Liza’s England (formerly The Century’s Daughter)
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The Regeneration Trilogy
Regeneration
The Eye in the Door
The Ghost Road
Another World
Border Crossing
Double Vision
The Life Class Trilogy
Life Class
Toby’s Room
Noonday

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is
entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Pat Barker
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House
LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, a division of
Penguin Random House Ltd., London, in 2018.
doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random
House LLC.
Excerpt from The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Copyright © 2000, Philip Roth. Published by Jonathan
Cape, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited, The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited,
and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Emily Mahon
Cover illustration: Engraving by Louis Charles Ruotte, drawn by François Gédéon Reverdin, nineteenth
century, after an antique sculpture at the Vatican Museums. Bibliothèque Nationale. akg-images
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Barker, Pat, 1943– author.
Title: The silence of the girls : a novel / Pat Barker.
Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018014387 (print) | LCCN 2018015358 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385544214 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9780385544221 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Trojan War—Fiction. | Troy (Extinct city)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. |
FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / War & Military. | GSAFD: Historical fiction. | War stories.
Classification: LCC PR6052.A6488 (ebook) | LCC PR6052.A6488 S55 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014387
Ebook ISBN 9780385544221
v5.3.2
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Contents
Cover
Also by Pat Barker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Two
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part Three
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Author’s Note
About the Author
For my children, John and Anna; and, as always,
in loving memory of David
“You know how European literature begins?” he’d ask, after taking
the roll at the first class meeting. “With a quarrel. All of European
literature springs from a fight.” And then he picked up his copy of
The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. “ ‘Divine Muse,
sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles…Begin where they first
quarrelled, Agamemnon, the King of men, and great Achilles.’ And
what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls?
It’s as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a
woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted
in a war.”
—The Human Stain, Philip Roth