Girl, Woman, Other Book Review

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Girl, Woman, Other is a collection of stories told from the perspective of 12 Black characters, mainly women, and their lives in Britain spanning almost a century. This eclectic mix of characters give us a perspective often not shown and simply portrays 12 lives and how they were lived. From a lesbian playwright and a non-binary Twitter influencer to those simply unhappy in their marriages and wanting something more than the hand they’ve been dealt, this book explores everything from systemic racism and gender identity to our sexual desires and the innate longing we all feel to fit in.

What I like about this book is that Evaristo is always vague about times and places within the stories which gives them a reach far beyond those reading now. These stories should be relatable and are both for their complex protagonists but also for their monotonous struggles which we all experience. But as a story of 12 Black people, what this book doesn’t focus on are their struggles because of their ethnicity but rather their experiences, both good and bad. This is very much a collection of people, just living.

The prose is interesting because there’s next to no punctuation and new sentences aren’t started with capital letters, but rather broken up with paragraph breaks. This gives it a stream-of-consciousness style effect, but also reiterates the book’s nature to rebel against conformity in more ways than one.

Whilst there’s no overarching storyline between each narrative, I think the message in the books transcends traditional storytelling. The plot isn’t the thing that keeps you reading – the people do. They will draw you in with their reflections of yourself, but also reflections of those you’ve never met and learning their personalities will help you understand how others unlike yourself have lived.

This book has moments of darkness, but it also has moments of immense joy. It’s quite simply a tableau of the rollercoaster that is life. Anma, Yazz, Dominique, Carole, Bummi, LaTisha, Shirley, Winsome, Penelope, Megan/Morgan, Hattie, and Grace are an interesting and varied group of people who, all in their own ways, prove how they’ve achieved in their lives, show their deepest desires, their regrets, and the people they love the most. It’s a raw and truthful account of 12 lives without a filter, showing the joys and struggles of their journeys, full of queer characters and formidable personalities shutting down the patriarchal norms – this is a powerful and empowering book. READ IT!