The Voyage Home - Review
By Owain Williams
In recent years, there has been a seemingly-unending barrage of fiction book retelling different Greek myths from different perspectives. I have even covered one on the blog previously. None, however, have come close to matching the honest – and often brutal – evocation of the variety of human experiences quite like Pat Barker in her series based on the Trojan War, which began in 2018 with The Silence of the Girls.
The Voyage Home is the latest addition to this series. Beginning almost immediately after the previous book, The Women of Troy, ends, the book tells of the return of Agamemnon’s contingent of the Achaean army to Mycenae and of Clytemnestra’s plans to avenge the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia. Each book follows the same format, with a primary first-person perspective accompanied by several third-person perspectives, and The Voyage Home is no different. Unlike the previous two books, however, which featured Briseis as the primary perspective, The Voyage Home is told from the perspective of Ritsa, an enslaved woman owned by Machaon.
The Voyage Home is far more than a simple retelling of Clytemnestra’s revenge – a favourite topic of ancient playwrights. Rather, much like Barker’s other Trojan War books, it is an exploration of the effects of war has upon those who have experienced it. Unlike The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, however, which discuss the effects of war as it rages and after it has just ended, respectively, The Voyage Home explores the long-term effects, both for those who fought and those whose lives were impacted by the fighting. In one brief moment, we are told how grief and shock has caused many enslaved Trojan women to miss their periods for months. As for the Greeks, while Ritsa has an obvious antagonism towards them, we are still given a sympathetic account of their post-war lives, even while the sheer brutality of the sack of Troy is recounted.
“Men came back from that war changed in all kinds of ways, and they brought the battlefield home with them” (p. 216)
During a feast, for example, we see a young Mycenaean be startled by a gong marking the beginning of the feast, believing they are under attack, who must be calmed down by his friends. Ritsa must also deal with her new station as a slave among her conquerors, which, she notes, comes surprisingly easily. As a woman of Lyrnessus, a city taken early in the Trojan War, she has had time – the last two books – to come to terms with her new social station. As such, instead, we see her navigating her new life, finding what comforts she can and learning the different hierarchies of civil life after years in the Greek military camp.
The biggest potential hurdle some readers may face is the use of modern language. Barker does not do much to make the setting feel like a different time. Ritsa, for example, is a “catch-fart” (p. 1), a disparaging term for a slave, and Agamemnon’s declining health is a “state secret” (p. 62). This is something Barker has been very open with before, however, noting how, as the Trojan War is a myth, “the rules for writing historical fiction simply don’t apply”. Yet as this is the third book in the series, it should come as no surprise to readers, even if it did occasionally feel somewhat jarring. I also noted one or two deviations from information in the mythology. Machaon, for instance, is called Agamemnon’s “personal physician” (p. 23) and is said to come from a farm near Mycenae. In the Iliad, Machaon is said to come from Tricca, a place in Thessaly, and is a son of Asclepius (Iliad 2.729–732). The use of Greek instead of Achaean or Argive is another example. Again, as Barker wrote, “the rules for writing historical fiction simply don’t apply”. We might be concerned with ‘canon’, but mythology is fluid, with different recorded versions existing from antiquity.
The Voyage Home is not a grand, sweeping, Machiavellian epic about Clytemnestra’s scheming – although there are elements of plots and politics – but an intimate, character driven exploration of the effects of war using one of the ancient Greeks’ favourite stories as a backdrop. With vivid, sometimes visceral descriptions, Barker’s narrative grips you from start to finish, even if you know the ultimate conclusion. The Voyage Home is an excellent addition to Barker’s Trojan War books, and I am looking forward to any future volumes – the possibilities are (nearly) endless!
The Voyage Home by Pat Barker (ISBN: 9780241568248) is available from Hamish Hamilton for £20.00 (Hardback).
