Reviews with content warning for Death - Дівчина, жінка, інакша

This gorgeous, full, moving book follows the loosely connected lives of twelve Black womxn throughout England. I’d liken it a bit to the musical RENT, with a glorious cacophony of people existing in imperfect concinnity.

What I found most mesmerizing about Evaristo’s novel is the way it deftly arouses empathy for each flawed, fully human character. The level of interconnectedness of each story varies, but ultimately highlights the validity of varied experiences, the truth that we cannot understand the depth of a single person’s life or internal narratives, and the need for radical compassion above most anything else.

Stylistically, GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER is unlike any book I’ve ever read. Each chapter illuminates the life of a specific character, and is delivered in a train-of-thought style with nearly no punctuation. In a way, it felt like sitting at a loud dinner party with people who love each other actively reminiscing and telling stories simultaneously. Once I got into the flow of it, I found it perfectly fit the spirit of the book.

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sheryl_macca's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Initially I found this book to be really frustrating. I was enjoying what Girl, Woman, Other had to say but not how it was being said. It didn't feel like a book of short stories to me, it was a novel of intertwined lives told from multiple POVs. I generally love multiple POVs but I was disappointed as I had been expecting something different. The free form structure was also forcing me to read quickly like it was a race. It was distracting me from the content which I did actually like most of the time.

Unfortunately, I disliked some of the first characters I was introduced to, especially Yazz. I almost DNF'd after the first chapter from Yazz. Before I did, I looked up reviews from other readers and I found a lot of people were equally as undecided as me during the first third of the book. These readers were mostly all glad that they had persevered and finished it and so I decided to continue on. It was really interesting to find that so many people had mixed feelings about such a critically acclaimed book!

It was a conscious effort for me to slow down against the flow of words and to absorb the voices properly as I read. The effort didn't particularly lighten as I went on either. The writing style did, however, make the narration more conversational and dynamic. I felt I was a part of the conversation, like I was in the room with these characters and I really did enjoy that. I'm not convinced that the benefits of the free form style outweighed the negatives having now finished the book.

I found that some of the characters were also unreliable narrators, Dominique particularly. I usually avoid unlikeable characters and unreliable narrators and I don't remember ever having read a book containing both before. I was a little wary of some voices and therefore not fully immersed every time they popped up.

Like those reviewers who persuaded me to continue reading, I was eventually glad that I persevered. I found stories that I enjoyed, loveable characters and convincing voices used confidently. My favourite was Bummi but I also loved Hattie and Shirley. These were strong, proud, resilient women. They were aware of the mistakes they had made in life and were courageous enough to admit them. They had interesting and emotional intersectional stories to tell.

What prevented me from DNF-ing straight away was Evaristo's intersectional insights and current ideas and experiences. Thankfully, more and more of this appeared with every chapter as I read on. Evaristo challenges norms, invites debate and explores concepts of racism, feminism, education, sexual assault, gender, motherhood, immigration, LGBTQIA+ issues, domestic abuse, platonic love, forbidden love...and so many other things. Unlike with most books, each of Evaristo's characters experiences a different cocktail of the above at different stages of life as we all actually do.

You don't always need to be loud, shocking or dramatic to be powerful and this book is proof of that. Girl, Woman, Other is dignified, empowering, challenging and, it turns out, much less frustrating than I first thought.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging emotional slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The way this was written without full stops took a while to get used to, but in the end I liked it. It made the prose feel poetic, and each character still felt unique. It felt like listening to a group of people telling you a story.

There were some perspectives I liked, but some of them felt really mean-spirited (both Yazz and Morgan’s segments read like they were the targets of mockery by the author, which was disappointing) and it's weird that three different people managed to magically rise out of depression on a dime for no reason. The ending felt really predictable and the character it involved annoyed me.

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sachikoriddle's review against another edition

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5.0

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