Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo won the Man Booker Prize (jointly with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments) in 2019. It is an unconventional novel, in that it has the feel of a series of short stories written in a poetical manner, each focusing on different characters. At first it's a bit of shock when you move on to the next story, as you are kind of left hanging! But then the more you read on, the more links you see between the various characters until finally, it is all brought together at the very end in what could possibly be seen as a conveniently neat bow. The book follows several generations of mainly black, British women, all navigating the challenges of family, love, loss and how that moulds their personal identity, in terms of race, sexuality and economic standing. There are so many characters that I don't feel able to outline them all. I struggled to get into this book, as I found it hard to relate to almost everyone and found myself having to really try hard to like any of them. However, as time went on, I did start to get into some kind of rhythm (and Hattie helped massively with that), and really wanted to know how things would turn out with all of the mothers, daughters, friends and creative partners featured. At times, some of the characters may be being used as political mouthpieces which led, in my opinion, to some unbelievable dialogue, but to hear such viewpoints in a novel is no bad thing. This book challenges preconceptions, and shines a light on the lives of people from a range of backgrounds and experiences that are not often visible in literature. I think it's definitely one that would split the audience, but I'm so pleased that, after a shaky start, I stuck with it.
My STAR thing: FOUR.
Length: 464 print pages.
Price I paid: Free, borrowed from library as an audiobook.
Formats available: print, unabridged audio download, ebook
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