The Voyage Home (Pat Barker) – book review

Bookshelves are now replete with re-tellings of Greek myths, none more so than the story – told in the Orestia – of the death of Agamemnon at the hands of his wife Clymnestra. Just recently, this tale has been retold in Colm Tobin’s excellent House of Names, and in Jennifer Saint’s Elektra. Pat Barker comes to it as the third volume of her series based on the Trojan wars which started with The Silence of the Girls and continues with The Women of Troy. These books, as is clear from their titles, have focussed on the women in these tales, mainly silent characters or prizes of war.

In The Voyage Home, Barker begins where the previous book left off – Troy is destroyed and the Greek army is packing up to leave. Agamemnon has taken Cassandra, prophetess and daughter of his enemy Priam, as his wife. Cassandra has already foretold that both she and Agamemnon will be killed but her curse is that no one believes her prophecies. Waiting for Agamemnon at home is Clymnestra, who has not only been ruling in his ten year absence but still blames him for killing their daughter Iphegenia in order to seek the favour of the gods. In the middle of all of this is Cassandra’s servant Ritsa, another one of the spoils of war. Ritsa a woman with knowledge and gifts of healing, forced into a subservient role and while compassionate, is also looking for a better life.

Barker once again delivers a startlingly insightful and rich tale within the confines of a story that has been retold thousands of times. In this case Barker does so by focussing on women who had some agency which is taken from them and the consequences of them seeking to claw that agency back. Clymnestra ruled in Agamemnon’s absence but is cast back into the role of spurned wife on his return. And Cassandra, once a priestess of Apollo, finds herself in the role of concubine. In Cassandra, Barker returns to one of the key themes of this series, the impact of war on women:

Agamemnon rode with Cassandra at his side… she was King Priam’s daughter, once a princess, now Agamemnon’s concubine, obliged to lie in his bed and bear his children. What better symbol could there be of Troy’s defeat in war. In war, men carve messages on women’s bodies, messages intended to be read by other men.

There is more of this story to tell – this cycle of violence next leads to the revenge of Orestes and Electra on their mother. And Barker may well return to these stories. But this feels like a natural stopping place for her exploration of the Trojan war – from the tragedy and sacrifice of a young girl which started it, to the use and abuse of female slaves during the war, through to the consequence of those actions. In a field replete with re-tellings of these stories, Barker’s approach to the material – reverential but not slavish and using the narrative to draw out universal themes – has always stood out and The Voyage Home is no exception.

Robert Goodman
For more of Robert’s reviews, visit his blog Pile By the Bed

Other reviews you might enjoy:

• Elektra (Jennifer Saint) – book review
• Ariadne (Jennifer Saint) – book review
• Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows (Balli Kaur Jaswal) – book review