Book - Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo

What a thing it must be when as a Booker Prize Winner (2019) all you need to put on the latest book page of your website is a list of accolades.

All well deserved.

Girl, Woman, Other takes us through the stories of a variety of characters, mainly black and female, through about 100 years of generations. Although an easy read, I was a third of the way through before I began understanding why this book is so well-regarded. I especially enjoyed reading about the older characters that are introduced in the last third at which point the book came alive for me. I related especially to the exasperated teacher from the period I was at school in the late 1970s/80s. Seeing the late Rosa Guy, my favourite childhood author mentioned, prompted me to look up her story too. I found she lived not far from where I was based in New York and it made me wish I’d looked her up then.

You get into debt to buy a house, not a dress 

The characters are loosely connected and I wish I’d made a family tree as I went along. I’ll have to wait for the (inevitable) film version. I only picked Girl, Woman, Other up towards the end of last year as it was recommended by a colleague and made it’s way on to my booklist. I probably would have got it from the library, had the library not been closed for the best part of the year. As it happens, it’s a worthy addition to the bookshelf during my most plenteous year of book buying.