Girl Woman Other, by Bernadine Evaristo

It is interesting that this book was joint winner of the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood’s sequel to the Handmaid’s Tale. While both champion women they could not be more different in tone, structure and style. There is no plot, but a jerky series of narratives from multiple points of view. The vast majority of these are of black women and girls. Some know each other, many are related, some paths cross briefly. They are mothers and daughters, grandmothers and godmothers, sisters and aunts. Several jump back in time to the 50s and 60s when many Caribbean immigrants arrived in the UK. The disjointed structure features minimal punctuation, with sentences ending midway and restarting on the next line, but never with a full stop. It’s not apparent what purpose this serves – perhaps to parallel the disjointed and dysfunctional nature of many lives? The novel starts and finishes with Amma, a lesbian scriptwriter coming into her own in her 50s. In between it moves around a plethora of friends, acquaintances, allies, adversaries and ancestors. It stays mostly in south London, occasionally venturing to the north of England and to the Caribbean. These are women with lives, loves, hates, jobs, careers, children, who have experienced sexual assault and discrimination. They encompass all shapes, sizes and shades. An epilogue provides a twist that reinforces the theme while simultaneously explaining an anomaly in the cast of characters.