Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo + The 2019 Booker Prize Winner

 Girl,Woman,Other by Bernardine Evaristo - 2019 Booker Prize Winner

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives of 12 British women of color over several decades. The women struggle to establish themselves in families, relationships and careers.  

 

Each woman has a dedicated chapter in which we learn details of their histories.  Several of the lives are intertwined as mother and daughter, sisters, lovers, business associates.

We have Anna, a lesbian playwright.  Her play’s production draws the plot together.  There is a teacher not quite at home in lesbian communities and unhappy bride from The Barbados.

I enjoyed this book a lot, the characters are interesting.  Of course their relationships to men are central to their lives.

From The author’s website 

British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of eight books and numerous other works that span the genres of verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, journalism, and radio and theatre drama. Her writing and projects are based around her interest in the African diaspora. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. In October 2021, her first non-fiction book, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up, will be published by Penguin UK & by Grove Atlantic USA 2022).

Bernardine’s novel Girl, Woman, Other won the Booker Prize 2019, the first black woman and black Briitsh person to win it in its fifty year history.  The novel also won many other prizes including the British Book Award’s Fiction Book of the Year & Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award for Fiction. It was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller for five weeks, the first woman of colour to achieve this position in the paperback fiction chart, spending 44 weeks in the Top 10. There are now over 50 translations of Bernardine’s books either published or in progress. She has received many awards, nominations