Description
***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019***
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
‘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
Sarah Turner –
To some, a Booker prize for a book is the ultimate recommendation. For others (me!), it has too often been a sign that the book is going to be too literary, too hard-going and one to avoid. Girl, Woman, Other is the book that has changed my mind forever!
The style of prose and the lack of punctuation to begin with made me worry it would be style over content, but I didn’t have to worry for long. Only a couple of chapters in and I barely noticed, and whilst I think the stylisation didn’t add anything to the book I don’t think detracted in any way either.
I spent a large number of chapters really enjoying the characters, the writing and the loose way in which they were all interlinked, but I did have a nagging feeling that there was an absence of a plot. However by the end, without wanting to give spoilers of any kind, there had been a plot all along, and it was really well delivered.
Evaristo is a really really strong voice in contemporary literary fiction. I enjoyed this a lot. A commercial Booker winner – well, who’d have thought! And for my money – she should have been the single winner.