Review: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

This Booker Prize winning novel almost needs no more reviews adding to the hundreds of glowing ones it has received so far, but it is such an incredible piece of work that I couldn't not write about it.

The novel follows twelve women from different walks of life. The first four of the chapters are grouped into three characters, and these three characters are either friends or family. However, the whole cast of characters are linked together in some way, some links being looser than others.

The stories cover a great many things but at the heart of it all is what it means to be a Black woman in the U.K. There are lots of intersections to these experiences - sexuality, gender identity, relationships, immigration status, class, engaging with so called 'meritocracy'. The experiences of the collective span decades, and we see how differently the older ones live than the younger ones according to attitudes of the time.

The novel is almost as much poetry as prose. Not a full stop to be seen anywhere but the prose runs freely and lyrically as if it were balancing the tightrope between conventional sentences and blank verse. The effect glues your eyes to the page, not wanting to be interrupted until the end of a character's story or chapter to understand just what happened, why these women fit together.

Too often in the media, films and TV, Black people are treated as one of two stereotypes: the thug/gangsta, or someone extraordinary. The latter is as much damaging, in my opinion, as the former. It's often said that Black people have to work twice as hard to get half as much as a White person. In all of these cases, what seems to happen is that Black people are seen as Black first, human second, and this doesn't happen with White people. This book celebrates and shines a light on the experience of Black women, in all their humanity and, yes, their Blackness. It is a stunning, invigorating read that challenges us to do away with the stereotypes of Black women and just see their stories in their richness and vibrancy.