Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

 

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo follows the stories of twelve characters, mostly women who are British and black. One of the characters shares the same first name as me and it's an unusual enough name that I think it might be the only book I've ever read with a character with my name! This is a structure of a book I keep trying to read (see The Great House and Women and Children First), but I guess it's time for me to admit that it doesn't work for me.

You just don't get to spend enough time with the characters. Just as you're settling into a voice and a past and really learning about someone, you move on to a new character. It also sort of feels like each vignette is an afterschool special that's meant to teach us some grand lesson. The writing was interesting and I took down lots of lines of note, but if it's going to bother you that there's not capitalization at the beginning of each paragraph, I wouldn't recommend this. All the other punctuation was as required, so it didn't bother me too much, but I also don't know exactly what the point was. 

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

when they leave uni it’s gonna be with a huge debt and crazy competition for jobs and the outrageous rental prices out there mean her generation will have to move back home forever, which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it’s so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America  (location 634)

I mean, this was published in 2019...

her favourite poetry book is called I is a Long Memoried Woman by a Guyanese lady called Grace Nichols (location 3339)

I'm keeping track of books I see in books. It's very meta. 

she and the reading group had a big argument, no, it wasn’t no argument, it was a debate, the other day, about whether a poem was good because they related to it, or whether it was good in and of itself (location 3341)

This sounds like a fun reading group!

Things I looked up:

samizdat (location 300) - the clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state, especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe (a samizdat newsletter)

ackee (location 516) - lychee

Drambuie (location 521) -  golden-coloured, 40% ABV liqueur made from Scotch whisky, heather honey, herbs and spices

Alexander Technique (location 680) - named after its developer Frederick Matthias Alexander, is an alternative therapy based on the idea that poor posture causes a range of health problems

pedalos (location 1007) - pedal boat

protests against Clause 28 (location 1399) - Section 28 refers to a part of the Local Government Act 1988, which stated that local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship"

egotarians (location 4278) - Relating to a dish or cuisine created only to show off the chef's culinary skills or creativity

mardy (location 4360) - angry and complaining; refusing to be pleasant to other people

Siege of Mafeking (location 4933) - a 217-day siege battle for the town of Mafeking (now called Mahikeng) in South Africa during the Second Boer War from October 1899 to May 1900; the lifting of the siege, while of little military significance, was a morale boost for the struggling British.

chiffonier (location 5084) - this is a piece of furniture; it actually has different definitions if you're looking at the British versus North American definition

Hat mentions:

...the orange nylon suit and hat she wore meant customers saw her as a uniformed servant to do their bidding..(location 306)

Yazz reckons that by the time guys her age want to settle down, her ovaries will be busted and they’ll be on to women half their age who can still drop babies at the drop of a hat (location 786)

Winsome is distracted by the men who come back into view through the kitchen window and amble up the beach in the blazing heat, neither wearing sun cream nor a sun hat, in spite of her nagging (location 3498)

most people took favourably to Slim, he was confident and talkative, spoke to strangers, even hostile ones, diffusing their animosity, especially when they heard his accent, they praised his courteousness, his yes m’ams and no sirs, they liked the way he opened doors for women, tipped his hat at men, making them feel respected (location 4718)

she found a job making artificial flowers for a hat factory...(location 4843)

brown shawl wrapped against her shoulders, hair like a bird’s nest with a hat on it (location 4872)

she was taught to knit woollen stockings, a hat and a scarf to wear in winter, to polish her black booties with buttons up the side until they shone, which she wore with pride once she got used to them because at first they gave her sores, never having worn shoes before (location 4897)