Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Page Count: 455
Apparently, Evaristo’s novel was so good that the Booker Prize judges had to pick it along with Atwood’s novel ‘The Testaments’ as the two winners for 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction. While Atwood’s sequel novel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was a clear favorite for the prize, given its literary phenomena and anticipated fame, Evaristo’s ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ had to be something really special to win the prize alongside ‘The Testaments’.
As it so happens, I had to wait almost a year for a domestic copy of this novel to arrive in our markets, which usually is three times cheaper, to buy and read it. And now that I have, I can confidently say that this really is a special novel – a novel that represents its time and era in fun and colorful way.
Based on four chapters that tells 12 interconnected stories of mostly queer and gender-diverse black women, this novel beautifully and entertainingly presents the lives of Britian females, both young and elderly, modern and old. Chapter 1 tells the stories of Amma, a queer theater director, her exuberant daughter Yazz, and her best friend/lover Dominique; chapter 2 follows the lives of former school friends, the young rape-victim and later successful banker Carole, her friend, the abandoned daughter, LaTisha, and Carole’s mother Bummi; chapter 3 takes us into the lives of Shirley King, a schoolteacher as well as Carole’s teacher, her colleague Penelope, and Shirley’s mother Winsome; the last chapter is about the trans/non-binary Megan/Morgan, their trans friend online Bibi, and Morgan’s grandmothers Hattie and Grace.
All of these stories first individually and then combined, paints a complicated picture of modern-day adversity, identity-craze, and individualism in an easy and most enjoyable way.
Here, we have stories of old people and how they lived their lives in the pre-tech world; stories of black women and how they struggle for identity and respect both as black people and female people; stories of transgenders who were born in the wrong body and how taking matters in their own hands require tremendous courage; stories of rape victims who cannot come out in public since they take some or most of the blame on themselves; stories of Muslim ladies with hijabs and how their day-to-day choices make them victims of Islamophobia; and in all of them, stories of standing up for one’s rights, stories of love and loss, of lust and betrayal, and of identities in an increasingly individualistic world.
What makes this novel, which might otherwise be such a controversial and overwhelming work, on the contrary so great and cool is Evaristo’s understanding of the rapid shifts and changes that’s going on in our world and then her chilled-out and internet-age prose which truly captures the ‘vibes’ of modern-day age. With her no-caps, no-periods, hashtags, internet language, Evaristo freshly and vibrantly syncs with the thoughts and images of all people she writes about in this novel.
And if all of this might sound too modernistic and unappealing, Evaristo, despite such a funky prose, manages to make her novel literary; there were passages throughout the 450 pages novel that I loved so much for its articulateness, storytelling, and warmth.
With a bit of effortsome task of keeping track of all the characters and their interpersonal relations, this novel is a great read; funny, fresh, diverse, warm, and overall important.
Evaristo’s novel ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ would, and
should, go down the history as a novel representative of its time and age.
Entertainingly important!
Ratings: 5/5 ***** December 24, 2020_