Name: CJ's review of Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Item: Girl, Woman, Other
Rating: 4
Author: CJ

Bernardine Evaristo

With her historic Booker win, Bernardine Evaristo is the author everyone is talking about. The standout book of 2019, Girl, Woman, Other is the number book you need to read this year. ***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith, author of How to be both 'Sparkling, inventive' Sunday Times 'Funny, sad, tender and true, deserves to win awards' Red 'Brims with vitality' Financial Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2019

Girl, Woman, Other

Sachi

she's got what she needs, not the same as what she wants 

feminism needs tectonic plates to shift. not a trendy make-over

BRITISH BOOK AWARDS AUTHOR & FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER 'The most absorbing book I read all year.' Roxane Gay ____________________________ This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . ____________________________ '[Bernardine Evaristo] is one of the very best that we have' Nikesh Shukla on Twitter 'A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity' Nicola Sturgeon on Twitter 'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith, author of How to be both 'Exceptional. You have to order it right now' Stylist 'Sparkling, inventive' Sunday Times

Beatrix

a Cog in the Wheel of Bureaucratic Madness

she's wearing a light grey pencil skirt and jacket, powder-blue blouse, grey neck-tie, black patent leather court shoes, and her pride

Lily Cooper

‘Grace watched Mary walk away, black boots split at the sides, ripped dress trailing the mud of the path, brown shawl wrapped against her shoulders, hair like a bird’s nest with a hat on it, an orange rose Grace had made specially for her stuck on its side

bye-bye, Gracie, she called out, her voice choked, not looking back, as she opened the gate and disappeared down the lane’

Martin Meyer

mikee ♡

these women have all lived diverse and multifaceted lives, each with their own mistakes, turning points, and struggles. as readers, we get to see their point of views, the reasonings behind their choices, and who they are as women. i had no choice but to become emphatic towards these characters despite the morally grey values and actions some of them may showcase because we were shown the context—the “whys.” 

never read a book like this, and it has definitely showed me another side to feminism and womanhood.

these women have all lived diverse and multifaceted lives, each with their own mistakes, turning points, and struggles. as readers, we get to see their point of views, the reasonings behind their choices, and who they are as women. i had no choice but to become emphatic towards these characters despite the morally grey values and actions some of them may showcase because we were shown the context—the “whys.” 

never read a book like this, and it has definitely showed me another side to feminism and womanhood.

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity among an interconnected group of Black British women

Camilla

Gelaine Trinidad

4.5/5 stars. 

Wow. I do not know where to start with this review. Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other gives representation in literary fiction a whole new meaning. I don't remember the last time I read a book that placed this much focus on characters. Each section centres on one individual, and they are all connected in some way or another. In an interview, Evaristo described this book as fusion fiction where characters bleed into other chapters about other people. She writes about black British families (more specifically, Black British women) and provides historical context as well as cultural and political relevance.

Evaristo can speak for every generation (their strengths and weaknesses). I had a deeper level of understanding and empathy for each main character and their battles. This book is about a person's layered identities and how they go about living their life politicizing (or repressing) their gender, race, class, or culture. This book is also about mothers and daughters and how family dynamics change or remain stagnant over time. I wasn't bothered by Evaristo's writing style and form; it flowed naturally and freely in an almost poetic and stunning way. She doesn't shy away from revealing people's flaws and manages to work her way inside each character's psyche and subconscious.

There are unreliable narrators, and I enjoyed learning about a person from different perspectives. You learn about someone not only as a mother but as a daughter and a friend too. I think every one should read this book. It allows you to see people as a whole with their overlapping identities. There are so many themes in this book, and it felt right to have them exist without being too didactic. It doesn't feel forced despite all the weight this book carries. It is humanistic and fluid in its core. I think the book ended beautifully—a well-deserved Booker Prize winner.

The style and structure of this book was so beautiful. It allowed such flow - I loved the chance to be in so many heads and hear so many voices, that all then intertwine with stories together. Fascinating array of characters and dynamics, between family, between friends, and brilliant to have it all overlapping and webbing together.

Andrea Morales

los personajes?? los temas?? la escritura?? LA CANTIDAD DE LESBIANISMO??? increíble 10/10

Lindy

I think I would have responded to this better had there been less of it, like if I read one chapter excerpted in an anthology or something. There's twelve different viewpoint characters and not much variance in terms of voice, general trajectory, theme or tone to distinguish them. 

At its best, Girl, Woman, Other is an up to date satire of self-involved activist/artist types. At its worst, its a parade of caricatures enacting an pantomime play of cliches. Also kind of put me in mind of overlong Vogue profiles of Women Who Succeeded.

Rodrigo Figueiredo Severino

Clearly in the minority here and maybe it was an expectations thing. I thought I was gonna like it a lot more. I think it suffers from some chapters/PoVs being infinitely more interesting then others, but then u also don’t spend that much time with most of them. It’s good and well written but I expected more I don’t know

vanessa

***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020* SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020 THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER This is Britain as you've never seen it. This is Britain as it has never been told. From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl Woman Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . . 'Masterful . . . A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Exceptional. Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. You have to order it right now' Stylist

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

Julie Rubens

I liked this book, but I honestly didn’t love it. 
As I’m very bad with names it was hard for me to keep track of which character I was reading about and I just found the book overall very confusing. 
I definitely liked reading about all the different perspectives and I liked how it all came together in the end, but I’d expected a little more from the book to be honest. 
I would recommend the book though, because it’s very wel written and touches on some important subjects, but I was often just a little lost.

Evaristo has created such a beautiful celebration of the good, the bad and the ugly experiences that come with being a black woman through several different narratives. Their similarities and differences are explicit, detailed and effective. The power of voice in this book is admirable and something that I very much enjoyed. I do not re-read very often, but this book will be one of the select few that I do. 

Madison Grady

farah farooq

Laura Mauler

My favorite chapters were Amma, Bummi, and Hattie. I HATED the Yazz chapter, just a completely off-putting person (maybe all 19 year olds are unlikeable, hard to say). The After Party chapter was a bit disappointing, it felt disjointed and why are we getting in the head of a man for page-upon-page all of a sudden? I thought the Epilogue more than made up for it, though.

Wanted to love, ended up irking me to no end. The amount of alliteration (or whatever this stylistic figure is called drove me up the fucking wall. “Powerful vibrations of (…) power”
“Good degreees, with various degrees of handsomeness”
“Gorging on her engorged breasts”
All the convos sounded like a robot wrote them and every main character was ‘more slender’ than other women. A lot of pseudo intellectual stuff that sounded like a copy/paste from Google.

Lila R E

I literally cannot remember the last time I read something this impactful. Evaristo is masterful in her exploration of race, gender, class... this is a true celebration of intersectionality. in the past I have found the "and all of the characters are connected!" cliché a bit tired but it's done so brilliantly here & in a way that addresses an array of societal conflicts, furthering the book's purpose by deepening our understanding of what it is to simply be human & exist as you are (& consequently the need for acceptance of people from all walks of life).
something that I appreciated in particular was Evaristo's ability to take multiple issues such as race & sexuality & examine them sensitively (& separately) without conflating all kinds of groups into one massive 'other', or dealing with minorities & members of the LGBTQ+ community under an umbrella (something that in my opinion happens way too often). 
there really is so much you can learn & gain from reading this book - I will unhesitatingly recommend it to absolutely anyone.

Jule

Maybe 3 or 3.5 ⭐️ for me

ich trau mich fast nicht diese Review zu veröffentlichen, weil ich leider sagen muss, dass mich Girl, Woman, Other nicht so wie viele andere überwältigen konnte.
.
Das Buch ist in 12 Kapitel geteilt. Jedes Kapitel beleuchtet eine andere britische, Schwarze Frau (wenn sie sich als solche sieht/sehen). Die einzelnen Kapitel sind lose miteinander verknüpft. Das Buch hat also fast einen Kurzgeschichtencharakter, wären da nicht die vagen Verbindungen zwischen den Kapiteln. Der Schreibstil ist gewöhnungsbedürftig: es ist ein Mix aus Prosa und Poesie mit fehlender Interpunktion, wofür ich ca. 100 Seiten brauchte um einen für mich funktionierenden Rhythmus zu finden.
.
Die Kapitel gehen sehr in die Breite, was das Buch zu einem sehr inklusiven, diversen und polyphonen Werk macht. Es werden mitunter Themen wie Identität, Rassismus, Freundschaft, Sexualität, Verlust, Liebe, das gegenwärtige Großbritannien uvm über verschiedene Generationen hinweg angesprochen. Rassismus und Vorurteile sind gemeinsame Nenner für die 12 Kapitel. Mir ist es wichtig zu unterstreichen, dass ich den Wert des Buches mit den behandelten Themen und Inhalten erkenne sowie schätze, und deshalb dieses Buch weiterempfehle. Dieses Buch ist auf jeden Fall eine Bereicherung.
.
Nichtsdestotrotz konnte mir das Format nicht das geben, was es so vielen anderen vermittelt hat. Ganz nach „das Ganze ist nicht größer als die Summe seiner Teile“ hätten mir die einzelnen Kapitel als Kurzgeschichten gut gefallen, nur als geschlossenes Werk ließen sie mich enttäuscht zurück. Jede Person erhielt zwischen 30-60 Seiten um ihre ganze Geschichte mitzuteilen und dies lies mich oft unzufrieden zurück. Ich hätte gerne weniger Charaktere gehabt und diese dadurch besser kennengelernt und tiefer in verschiedene Thematiken eingetaucht. So nahm ich sie oft als Sprachrohre für wichtige Thematiken wahr, welche sie repräsentieren sollten, was wiederum jedoch künstlich auf mich wirkte. Am Ende gab is in meinen Augen keinen Punkt, an dem die Geschichte sich entwickelt und vertieft hätte. Trotz so vieler ernster Themen war ich emotional wenig berührt und hatte nie wirklich Lust weiterzulesen. Daher würde ich es bei 3.5 Sternen einordnen.

Bilge Ince

In five categories, black, Muslim, female, poor, hijab bed
She’s the only one Yazz can’t tell to check her privilege
Courtney replied that Roxane Gay warned against the idea of playing ‘privilege Olympics’ and wrote in Bad Feminist that privilege is relative and contextual, and I agree, Yazz, I mean, where does it all end? Is Obama less privileged than a white hillbilly growing up in a trailer park with a junkie single mother and a jailbird father? Is a severely disabled person more privileged than a Syrian asylum-seeker who’s been tortured? 


This book is the life of many people not just women with a common point: facing discrimination. The author opened windows to see their lives from their own eyes and I think she created a masterpiece. I underlined and took so many notes from the book. Yet I think this is a book better to read in a long time, not in one breath.

 you see, Megan, I learnt first hand how women are discriminated against, which is why I became a feminist after I’d transitioned, an intersectional feminist, because it’s not just about gender but race, sexuality, class and other intersections which we mostly unthinkingly live anyway

Every character was crafted with love and care, some with a clear purpose and others seemingly just for the sake of being. Evaristo was able to geniously tow the line between individualism and community by making each character unique but also beautifully connected and slightly confusable (in some cases it was their connection that made them distinct). Loved this book, and will hopefully have a chance to read again more deeply and with the ending in mind.

The one thing I will say in slight criticism is that this book is by no means an easy read. It follows many different stories (sometimes multiple at a time) and can be slightly confusing. It took me almost 2 months to get through — which I cannot completely attribute to the book because I was in school when I started it— and definitely took some effort on the part of the reader. This may have been slightly intentional though. The characters were created with care and should be read with care. Each character is nuanced and deals with difficult and complex ideas. To read them quickly would be doing them and yourself a disservice. Though it took time, at no point did I find the experience unpleasant. 

Katie Warren

Every character was crafted with love and care, some with a clear purpose and others seemingly just for the sake of being. Evaristo was able to geniously tow the line between individualism and community by making each character unique but also beautifully connected and slightly confusable (in some cases it was their connection that made them distinct). Loved this book, and will hopefully have a chance to read again more deeply and with the ending in mind.

The one thing I will say in slight criticism is that this book is by no means an easy read. It follows many different stories (sometimes multiple at a time) and can be slightly confusing. It took me almost 2 months to get through — which I cannot completely attribute to the book because I was in school when I started it— and definitely took some effort on the part of the reader. This may have been slightly intentional though. The characters were created with care and should be read with care. Each character is nuanced and deals with difficult and complex ideas. To read them quickly would be doing them and yourself a disservice. Though it took time, at no point did I find the experience unpleasant. 

Very nice. Fluidly written, could not put it down, and had lots of feelings.

Ozge Kara

This was the best book I read in a very long time.

Joana da Silva

So... This might be kinda controversial but I didn't love this one. Yes, it's a great book, the stories all make sense and bring some very important themes to the table, but it wasn't a great experience. Although I liked the writing, it wasn't an easy book to read. I know, make it make sense. Nevertheless, I do understand why so many people love this book and all the recognition it got. It just wasn't all that for me.

Louise 

** spoiler alert **
           I have mixed feelings about this novel, I think there are some very important themes explored (if not in enough depth), but there's a reason why this book took me about 6 weeks to get through.. 🥴

We're following 12 POVs, all of these are black women (minus 1 who is non-binary) in Britain and it spans over the last 100 years. 

It's broken down into 3 POVs per chapter, so 4 groups of 3 characters. The 3 characters per chapter have direct bond in one way or another to each other (mother/daughter/friend/grandmother) etc. and then more loose bonds to other characters in other chapters.

Starting with the positives;
I absolutely loved the writing style. There are no full stops in this book, it's just a running monologue which really worked for me. 
I really enjoyed some of the characters, especially the older ladies in this story (Bummi & Hattie's chapters in particular I found very interesting)!
I feel like it covered a lot of important topics and then here is where I also have my faults; 
There was too many POVs for the author to really flesh out and explore the topics she was bringing up imo.
We have characters go through everything under the sun from gang r*pe, domestic abuse, drug addiction, being a foundling, sexism, racism etc, etc, etc and they're given 30-40 pages each??

Some of the characters are god awful. Yazz, Shirley & Shirley's mum Winsome in particular. Does Yazz really represent the young people of today? She was f*cking insufferable! Shirley was just boring, but her MUM, Winsome upon first meeting Shirley's boyfriend wanted to "massage his balls"?¿?¿ 
Who on God's green earth meets someone for the first time and thinks THAT??

All the characters are also relatively successful and seemed to get over their very life altering struggles so easily with no long term effect which is just bizarre. One character got clean from a heroin addiction in a matter of DAYS from just staying at home watching TV and taking showers...
That same character was non-binary and is a very successful social media influencer who done talks at universities..with seemingly very little struggle!
Another character had a very difficult life and after her husband passed was sh*gging a woman from church and later when she needed a loan to start her own business had s*x with a pastor!?!? Went home had a shower and not another word was spoken of that. 
There were a lot of women using their bodies to get what they needed and it seemingly having little or no effect on them.
That is but a few examples; there are much more.

I pressed on with this book hoping "The After-party" chapter would redeem this novel in some shape or form, wrap things up into.. something surprising/shocking/heartwarming?? Anything!
 But you don't get any of that. You get 10 pages of Roland(who is Yazz's father via sperm donation and probably one of the most insufferable, pretentious character in a book I've ever read) for no reason. I've no idea why the author chose to give some of the closing pages to his pov. Who doesn't class himself as black because he doesn't "like the word"..
 Yes *HIS* when this is literally a book about *black women*. HUH?? Make it make sense.
There was nothing of substance to the "After Party" chapter. 35 pages of pointlessness and then it tried desperately to redeem itself in the epilogue, which if nothing else set itself up for a nice last line.

This novel was trying to do too much and it didn't work for me. I really felt like this book was pandering to white peoples feelings and not a true reflection of black women's suffrage. A lot of the characters felt forced and phoney. Too try-hard and the fake forcing of femininism didn't come off as empowering or enlightening. I thought this book was going to showcase black excellence and strong women; and maybe as a yt woman I'm not at liberty to say jf this is an accurate portrayal of black women's history in Britain but as a WOMAN I can tell you it's not giving what it should have gave.


🎯An important book with an interesting writing style, that explores very important themes but with a fair few issues for me. My expectations were unfortunately not met this time. Brilliant idea, not so brilliantly executed imo.

Jamieson

Short story collections aren't typically my thing but this did win the Booker Prize so I thought I would give it a shot.

 I actually ended up enjoying it and being more engaged with it than I thought. This collection follows a group of different women whose stories are all loosely connected in different ways. 

While some stories were more engaging and interesting than others, I did love Evaristo's ability to capture a persona so quickly. Each character felt unique and their ideas/beliefs fully formed and attached to each character. In each story, I really felt like it was a character who I was inhibiting fully, and not the author. 

I really liked working out the small connections between individual characters. This book covrs a lot of ground thematically, including womanhood, queer identity, race, intersectionality, society and history and how it impacts on different individuals but I thought the issues were well tackled and I liked how different perspectives were brought to each issue. 

This is definitely a humanist book about belonging, community, identity and humanity and I can see why it won the Booker Prize.

mikee ♡ &
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

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Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo