The Voyage Home

Barker (The Silence of the Girls) recounts the aftermath of the Trojan War in this tense third entry in her Women of Troy series. With the city in ruins, victorious King Agamemnon and his Greek army sail home to Mycenae. On the ship, King Priam’s daughter Cassandra, once a virgin priestess and now a concubine, endures Agamemnon’s abuse. Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophesy but made sure no one would believe her. Now, on approach to Agamemnon’s royal palace, she foresees two dead bodies in the courtyard: hers and the king’s. Agamemnon also has a troubled mind—he sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigenia, to assure victory at Troy, and now he sees her ghost on the ship. Meanwhile, at the palace, Queen Clytemnestra plots to murder Agamemnon for killing Iphigenia. But the queen has her own enemies—her son Orestes and daughter Electra. The narrator, Ritsa, is another beleaguered woman. A Trojan survivor enslaved by Cassandra, she’s resigned to a life of subjugation. Barker suffuses the wrenching narrative with the women’s simmering contempt for the men who rule their world. Readers will relish this fierce feminist retelling. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Dec.)