Girl, Woman, Other

• I read it for the second time. Magnificent. Essential. Moving. Evaristo achieved what she set out to do: she conveyed in a very simple and beautiful way a truth we often forget—we are all equal, and we thrive best together. Let us cherish that.

• Magnificent novel of such grand scope and ambition. This is a novel about 12 women but it is also a sweeping history of the black British experience. The attention to detail, the structure, the syntax, it’s all brilliant and moving and truly represents what fiction at its finest.

• Bernardine Evaristo sings, even more than narrates, as if it were a polyphony—an album where each chapter is a track, a Twelve Way Street, so to speak. A fluid, hybrid anthem to inclusion and against racism, an earthquake for self-righteousness and conformism, a splendid, resounding raspberry blown in the faces of bigots, pious hypocrites, prudes, moralizers, and puritans.

• Polyphony requires balance: lines of melody that interweave, supporting each other one moment, competing for dominance the next. In her new novel, Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo employs these qualities to wonderful effect, composing a compelling work of individual voices in counterpoint.

• Girl, Woman, Other is about struggle, but it is also about love, joy and imagination. The book culminates with her protagonists – black women of different generations, faiths, classes, politics and heritages, and a few men too – thrown together at a party for a soap opera-style grand finale. Evaristo’s world is not idealised, but there is something uniquely beautiful about it.

1 / 5