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katewcunningham 's review for:
Girl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo
Honestly, maybe I am not smart enough to fully appreciate this book, but I felt like it was unnecessarily confusing. Before I get into that I want to address what I did love. I think the individual stories were glorious and important and real and eye-opening. The book covers a seemingly niche demographic because of the lack of coverage, so it is enlightening to read about being black in Britain and the queerness, identity, love, and trauma that different women experience. There is some beautiful simplistic poem-like prose throughout that I thoroughly adored, but I do have a few bones to pick. First, I think that the author's choice of structure (no capitalization and not much punctuation) is distracting. I, personally, think it altered what could have been a nice pace to the stories. Secondly, I found it hard to connect with many of the characters. I genuinely don't think this has to do with race or class, or any demographic source, I think it has to do with the information provided. Between the chapters/stories there was no continuity. Some felt like character studies while some felt like sections to a memoir, and so chapter to chapter I felt like I was being set back. I couldn't fully dive in because nothing was consistent and there wasn't much to grab on to. I think this is sourced from feeling like the author was speaking the whole time rather than being in a character's mind or life. Overall, worth the read for the actual narratives that you get, but I think technically is where it falls behind.