Book review: The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker

The epigraph of Pat Barker’s new novel is taken from Philip Roth. “You know how European literature begins?” says the teacher in The Human Stain. “With a quarrel. All European literature springs from a fight... And what are they quarrelling about? 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.”