Girl, Woman, Other

First off, this book is beautifully written and Evaristo‘s style of writing is unique unlike any other novel I have read. To be fair it took me a minute to get used to the style, there are no quotation marks for dialogue which threw me off in the beginning… The book is sectioned into twelve seemingly independent stories following twelve characters. Along the lines you will learn how some of them are connected, related or have crossed paths in the past. There is so much attention to detail when describing the character’s lives, their relationships, their struggles and personal challenges, the things that move them and matter most to them. It is a shame that we don’t get the chance to get to know the characters better the book moves too fast in some stages and a few stories end abruptly. Just an excerpt, a glimpse into their lives. The book allows you to immerse yourself in the different perspectives of those characters, that come from different backgrounds and have a wide array of experiences. The novel also touches on societal issues, discrimination, racism, and stereotypical thinking patterns. A lot of the characters embody feminist values. You see the book is very densely packed combining heavy societal issues condensed in twelve stories on only 450 pages. Most encounters with the characters are too brief to form an emotional connection to them. Since for me that connection is the most engaging part of a fiction novel I can’t give the book more than three stars. Let me tell you tho the story telling is exquisite. For me the ending is not quite satisfying as it doesn’t tie all stories into a neat little bow which I was yearning for at that point. But I guess that’s also part of life so the book is cohesive in that way. It is definitely worth the read.

girl, woman, other is a big story and it's several stories in one. it combines the most beautiful and strong voices in a unique style which makes it quite demanding and complex but also totally sucks you in. it's essentially a book about being a black woman* in britain. at the same time though, it's about being a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, a wife, a feminist, a teacher, a partner, it's about love and success and desire and grief and loneliness, finding yourself and connecting with one another. i loved reading about the characters' whole lives, i loved skipping through time and visiting different historical situations, i loved getting to know these 12 women* and seeing their stories all come together. this book is constructed expertly, the idea is ambitious and bernadine evaristo delivers on every level. i'm struggling to explain how she made me care about every single one of these protagonists over just a few pages! how can she talk about all these different themes like racism, feminism, gender, colonialism, arts, cultural history, etc. without it ever seeming all over the place? how can the writing be so lyrical yet funny yet cutting to the point? someone described this as a "masterclass in creative writing" and YES i agree. it's difficult and uncomfortable a lot of the time but also very enjoyable. girl, woman, other deserves all the awards it's received so far, and many many more!

This book is more like a collection of short stories, following black girls and women, but also a non-binary person through different times in England. Their lives are all somehow connected, they are each others partners, friends, mothers, daugthers, grandmothers and so much more. One woman, Amma, seems to stand out. Somehow, every story comes back to her; so for me Amma is kind of the protagonist of this book. I struggled a bit with the book, because it is written in a way that reminds me of poetry slam. And basically, whenever I started a chapter about a new character, the first pages didn't interest me and I paused. But when I finally got the motivation to continue, every single one of the stories amazed me - just never from the beginning. The stories deal with different topics; race, gender, sexuality, class, occupation, family, origin, ... it includes such a diverse cast of characters, perspectives and voices, and it made me more aware of some struggles in the Black community. My favorite stories were those of Dominique, Shirley and Megan/Morgan. I also loved how the translators handled the pronouns in the German translation for Morgan who is non-binary; there isn't yet a universally accepted pronoun for non-binary people in German, and the translators used "sier" and I really liked it. Like, some translators just leave the English "they" in the German translation and that always throws me out of my reading flow... For a five star rating, I just struggled too much with the very peculiar writing style, none of the perspectives had me hooked from the first page, and for my personal taste, there were too many perspectives. I don't even remember all of them, and while reading the book I already kept confusing some characters when they were referred to in a different character's perspective.