Publisher: Black Cat/Grove Atlantic Genre: Literary Fiction Page Count: 453 Year Published: 2019
Synopsis: From one of Britain’s most celebrated writers of color, Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women. Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other paints a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain, as well as looking back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.
The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.
Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.
“be a person with knowledge not just opinions”
This novel is so unique. I enjoy novels that play with form and are character-driven. This book is character driven in that each chapter is a new character’s story and defies convention in style. This novel is a sweeping tale of twelve womxn. This novel covers a lot of ground and explores a variety of lives and experiences—racism, sexism, lesbians, gender non-conformists, friendship, classism, sexual relationships, etc. Bernardine Evaristo constructs a novel that tells the stories that aren’t often explored and does so with lyrical prose. Written more as poetry than prose, there’s an urgency in the telling of the 12 lives, a need to share the stories before they evaporate into the ether of life. I was curious to see how the characters’ lives would intersect or if they would at all. Every person felt so different, and their lives sometimes meld in surprising ways.
This story is layered and unlike anything I’ve read before, which is why I feel like it’s difficult to put into words how I feel about it. I think the beauty of this novel is that is stirs up feelings and thoughts and leaves the reader with one truth – people are far more alike than they are different. Hyper-focus on difference reduces the universality of love, empathy, and compassion. The line, “life is an adventure to be embraced with an open mind and loving heart,” reveals the heart of this work. As a society, we seem to run away from the people or things that we don’t recognize or understand. Actually, we don’t always run away. We try to quash them, label them, other them for the sake of labeling our realities as the norm.
This novel is a tour de force, compelling and vulnerable with piercing commentary on the issues that permeate our world. 💛
Have you read this? 🥰
Read It Like Rory 