So many of my friends on Goodreads have this on their to-read list, and so many people on bookstagram have already read it and reviewed it, even my friends mum read it and gave a short one-sentence review of it. This book is everywhere and for good reason, let’s not forget it did win the Booker prize in 2019. I had to sit with this book and my thoughts on it for a bit, deliberating the star rating that I wanted to give it. All around, it has very positive reviews which, after reading it, I am not surprised at.
There are a lot of success stories over the course of this book and tales of overcoming various personal and generational struggles. Personally, I find success stories a little tricky, I think this mostly it’s the attitude of the person or character who is talking about this success. I have always found it a little challenging in my self to feel good for how well things are going for others, naturally, I am happy for them overall, seeing the work and overall efforts they put into the task, but there is a seed of jealousy and competitiveness that is present in me that stops me from fully embracing their achievements along with them, but I digress. The way that these journeys of all the characters is written about is done in a way that is illuminating and offering up a different perspective to that which can be seen in other novels. It’s tricky to note whether each character gets what they wanted at the end because it seems that each of the 12 has a happy ending or at least a happy moment and if they don’t they reflect on why keeping in mind that things could not have necessarily turned out differently.
As with so many books, there are characters you like and others that you don’t, and that was the case for me. There were some that, when I read their stories, I felt as if they were really there telling it to me, where I really could get a sense of them, but then there were others who I could not wrap my head around. Especially in the earlier chapters, I found a few of the characters a little arrogant and unwelcoming, a feeling which I got again in the ‘reunion’ (for lack of a better term) chapter of the novel when some of the persons came up again. It was this final chapter that slightly dampened my likeness for the tale. It seemed a little all over the place and to me, a little tricky to follow at some moments. The epilogue which followed was very clear and reminiscent of the earlier chapters.
Initially, I wasn’t sure how the various chapters linked together. It is clear from the get-go how the sub-chapters connect, but outside of that, I thought that this was just going to be a collection of tales. This was not entirely the case. As you get introduced to different persons across the novel, names pop up here and there, creating family and friendship ties across Evaristo’s work. Perhaps what I enjoyed most was the way that the novel was written. There is a calmness to it and a lack of formality that is typically associated with literature. The sentences are relaxed and you could probably count all the full stops that are in the entire novel – there aren’t few per se, but the author does refrain from using and adhering to the traditional structure of sentences and of capitalizing anything but names of people and places, which makes for a new perspective and one that I found very easy to read and follow along on.
Girl, Woman, Other is definitely worth a read, or at least a perusal if it is not something that is up your alley. It offers a unique perspective on women’s lives from the Anglo-Nigerian author; it’s illuminating and refreshing in ways that I have not seen before. It’s a great year to pick up, and even though fictional, still leaves an imprint once finished.
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