Girl, Woman, Other

Books | Fiction / Women

4.2

(908)

Bernardine Evaristo

NATIONAL BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE“A must-read about modern Britain and womanhood . . . An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black British families, their struggles, pains, laughter, longings and loves . . . Her style is passionate, razor-sharp, brimming with energy and humor. There is never a single moment of dullness in this book and the pace does not allow you to turn away from its momentum.” —Booker Prize JudgesBernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. 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 that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks 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.

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More Details:

Author

Bernardine Evaristo

Pages

464

Publisher

Grove Press

Published Date

2019-11-05

ISBN

0802156991 9780802156990

Community ReviewsSee all

"The format of this book is quite interesting and not one I've seen before, and it really fits the concept so well. The book is split into five parts plus an epilogue, the first four parts are split into three perspectives of women who's lives are intertwined, and the fifth part is the reunion of all the women. The sentence structure is also distinct, having a poetic quality to its breaks, making it worth a glance or two even if you choose to listen to the audiobook. Anyway, the book explores actually different perspectives, not just different people and provides background to why each person thinks the way they do - not necessarily a justification, just a reason. There's also never a clear "this is what's right, and this is wrong" which I appreciated because it kept the writing from feeling preachy and allows the reader to decide their own alliance with characters (if you'd like). 4/5🎭"

Mare

"DNF - I’m sure this holds a great collection of stories but it’s difficult to get into. The prose was strange. It was like modern poetry but in book paragraph formats. The paragraphs were typically different from each other, which extremely impacted the smoothness of reading. This style isn’t for me. The story had promise, but I was very thrown off at the prose. I might pick it up again later when it is a bit more appealing to me."

haven

"4.5 stars - I loved the diversity of stories in this novel. It follows 12 very different women who are all connected to each other through their relationships whether it is close friends, through motherhood, or simply strangers in the same room together. I thought each character was extremely well developed with flaws and virtues that made them so human. I would love a character at the beginning of their chapter and by the end I’d have a more nuanced view because I got to see them exist and make mistakes. There were several characters I loved reading about and wish we got more of and there were characters I didn’t like at all and could have done without. But Evaristo set out to make this story about 1,000 Black, British, women and I think the 12 she ended up writing about show so much diversity it makes sense that I didn’t like every single one."

A C

Alyssa Czernek

"The way this was written without full stops took a while to get used to, but in the end I liked it. It made the prose feel poetic, and each character still felt unique. It felt like listening to a group of people telling you a story. There were some perspectives I liked, but some of them felt really mean-spirited (both Yazz and Morgan’s segments read like they were the targets of mockery by the author, which was disappointing) and it's weird that three different people managed to magically rise out of depression on a dime for no reason. The ending felt really predictable and the character it involved annoyed me."

awesome_user_984860

"While a little hard to follow because the narrator didn't change voice throughout the narration, the stories of these women were beautifully intimate, with changing perspectives due to race (primarily black but with varying degrees of African ancestry), era in which they lived, political and social movements of their varied times and so much more. I loved the nuance the author took in how each person viewed the world around them, how they interacted with politics, culture, social norms around them and how it segued into the next story and finally connected at the end. It reminded me of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolff in the style of narration only instead of objects leading/circling/moving along with one character, it was one character's life leading to the next characters life, and not always in chronological order. I felt like I was seeing perspectives I would never have known. The author looks at lives of people of color (primarily cis-fem but also born female and gender non-conforming) from the turn of last century to the present day and keeps a finger on the pulse of each of their times and situations. Only problem I found was that the narrator was monotone throughout most of it. There was emotion where a character got heated but the narration was done from first person stream of consciousness which also didn't allow for as much differentiation. Still I felt like the author's writing is what kept me going with interesting story and new perspectives that kept me wondering, "what is life like for this person?" more so than the narrator making any effort to acknowledge the differing voices of the characters."

Katherine R

"“the truth is the hierarchies of power and privilege won’t disappear, every historian knows this, it’s innate nature and inherent in all societies and all eras and equally manifests in the animal kingdom, so I can’t pretend otherwise” "