Review: 'Girl, Woman, Other' by Bernardine Evaristo

Women are the heart, body, and soul of Girl, Woman, Other. I don't think I have spent as much time thinking about us and wondering about how we relate to our own world as I have while reading this book and discussing it with my mother. For that alone, I am grateful to Evaristo. But to have achieved something like that through poetic, incisive, free, and burdened language lifts this novel to an entirely different level.

Pub. Date: 5/2/2019
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton

Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.

 When conversations erupted around the decision by the Man Booker Prize in 2019 to award their prize to both Margaret Atwood, for The Testaments, and Bernardine Evaristo, for Girl, Woman, Other I initially wasn't sure why people were mad. In a way I thought it was nice for something that seemed like a shoe-in to not have pushed out a critically and popularly attested choice like Evaristo. Now that I have actually read Girl, Woman, Other my thoughts are more complex. (Note: I still haven't read The Testaments.) Now I feel a sadness that Girl, Woman, Other wasn't able to shine on its own, that it did have to end up sharing its spotlight. There is so much to this novel that feels revolutionary, quietly life-shattering and loudly argumentative. I still, to a certain extent, see a beauty in her work being put side-by-side with Margaret Atwood's, however. Evaristo's own work in Girl, Woman, Other thrives on the passing of the narrative torch, of understanding different ways of life, different kinds of struggles, of one story informing another. What I know of The Testaments, and especially of The Handmaid's Tale and how it used Science/Speculative Fiction to highlight female struggles, means that it could be an interesting companion piece to Girl, Woman, Other. I will report back once I've read it.

Girl, Woman, Other first came to me through the worldwide acclaim it was receiving. Then, two years later, it came to me through my mother, a process that felt much more natural and almost destined, once I read the book. She had two copies, one in her native German and one in English which now feels native to me. And so we read it, me after her, and like the women in Girl, Woman, Other, we found ourselves reflecting. Each chapter in Evaristo's book is dedicated to a different woman, many of whom we revisit towards the end in the final two chapters. We first get an insight into one character's life, before we hop in the mind of a daughter/mother/friend/acquaintance/colleague/stranger. One story will affect how you see another, yet the new one will also change your thoughts on the previous story. Often the connections between these women are clear from the beginning, sometimes it only reveals itself later on. Each chapter, each woman, speaks in a different style, some in patois, some in the Queen's English, some with the intemperance of youth, others with the weariness of age. Each feels real, alive, as if you might run into them at the shops tomorrow. I wouldn't want to give anything away by explaining to you who these people are, as discovering them through Evaristo's prose is just so much better. 

Bernardine Evaristo manages to make a whole range of people come alive in Girl, Woman, Other. Some are girls, some are daughters, mothers, friends, foes. Some no longer consider themselves women, some no longer consider themselves at all. Some have grown bitter, other are growing towards more awareness. Each of these characters is fully fleshed-out, alive on the page. I have gained a new kind of understanding for different (female) experiences, of the experience of growing up Black in Britain, of the enormous struggle and the small victories. Evaristo writes mostly without punctuation, except for a decisively placed full-stop here or there which I felt, viscerally. The writing ebbs and flows, recalcitrant and then overwhelming. Some characters seem unwilling to reveal too much while others overflow with thoughts, ideas, emotions, none fully thought-through. Evaristo finds a way to reveal her characters' identities through her writing, not just through the words she chooses. She takes 'show, don't tell' to a new level in Girl, Woman, Other. I will be looking for more of Evaristo's writing over the coming weeks and months, since I have been completely won over.

I give this book...

5 Universes!

Girl, Woman, Other is a truly astounding read, innovative and fresh in its writing and deeply insightful in its contents. As it was gifted to me, I hope to pass it on.