Girl, Woman, Other... What did you think?

[OilBaron]

Sorry if this has been done elsewhere - I did search but I couldn't find anything.

Has anyone else read 'Girl, Woman, Other'? What did you think?

I looked at it several times but decided against it because of the writing style. I absolutely despise writers that play with writing form, just for the sake of it. It always smacks of literary exclusion (only clever people can read this), or a strategic play (trying something different to get a prize).

So I thought I'd hate it. But then a friend bought it for me as a present so I decided to give it a go. That was yesterday evening and I've just finished it. I can't remember the last time I devoured a book that quickly.

I loved it. I have some reservations (Morgan/Megan's chapter was very clunky; at times it felt like leftist academic Twitter distilled into a novel; I struggled to identify with some of the characters; it had a bit of a gushy 'everyone gets a happy ending' vibe) but, overall, what a great work!

What did you all think?

Loved it! I was initially annoyed by unstructured writing style and thought it was going to make it a gruelling read but once I got used to it, all was fine. Some of the characters were better developed and more interesting than others. Yes it ends with the play being a success, the mother-daughter reunion etc but it wasn’t the worse for it. One of the few books I’ve read recently I was sorry to end!

One of the few books I’ve read recently I was sorry to end! YES, this is exactly how I feel about it.

I've got more of Bernadine Evaristo's books on order now

I didn't necessarily mean just that the play was a success, more that all of the characters in each chapter seemed to all turn out okay and well in the end. I don't think it detracted from the overall quality but it felt a bit gushy at times. Like, where are the women who end up dead at the hands of violent partners? Or on the street with crippling drug addictions?

I think it was a much better book than The Testaments (legendary author writes 'fan fiction' to cash in on TV success) and Bernadine Evaristo should have got the Booker Prize to herself.

I loved the links between the stories and found the ending quite satisfying, don't really want to read a lot of miserable stories. I'll definitely be reading more of her novels now.

I didn't finish 'The Testaments', I just couldn't get into it. It absolutely smacked of Atwood cashing in and didn't have the same 'heart' as 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
I also loved the way 'The Handmaid's Tale' finished without knowing what happened to June. For me, that was the whole point of the book - that we'd become involved with this one woman's story but Gilead and the use/abuse of women's bodies isn't about one woman (in our case June) - it's about womankind, the collective woman's body, men's power etc. June was just one story in a whole society of stories and, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't actually matter all that much. There was no need for a follow-up, the not-knowing ending was so powerful for me.

I actually don't like any of Atwood's other novels apart from 'The Handmaid's Tale' so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that I didn't get into 'The Testaments'.

But, yes, I agree that Evaristo should've won it to herself. I'm starting 'Blonde Roots' tonight

I didn’t love it. It was readable despite the lack of punctuation. And pacy. And some of the characters were interesting. But not spectacular or Booker worthy.

Which characters did you particularly like @Binterested?

I really wanted to hear more about Grace's mum (I think, I can't remember her name - the lady who died young from TB). I wasn't at all interested in Megan/Morgan - that chapter and her character felt very clunky and 'right on' rather than the free-flowing narrative of the others.

I agree re the Megan/Morgan chapter. It felt like a must-have for 2019 rather than a heartfelt characterisation.

I can't remember a lot of the names but I was interested in the teacher who was quite strict and a bit jaded and her pupil who ended up a successful city banker because they both seemed quite countercultural and not what black women are supposed to be. I didn't believe in the older woman (cleaner?) who found herself in a lesbian affair. It's been a while since I read it so I'm a bit hazy.

I found the university student daughter odd too - she was supposed to be woke I think and yet there was a bit where she didn't want her friend to get annoyed at someone touching her hair and I didn't think that was realistic. It would be annoying and anyway a woke student would look for any opportunity to wrongfoot someone else in terms of identity politics. BE seemed to be somewhat sceptical of the woke student and used her to showcase the thoughtfulness of her mother - thoughtfulfness gained through years of experience. And yet BE is ridiculously woke herself if any of her recent pronouncements are anything to go by.

Sorry if this is a bit garbled!

I’d disagree on the Megan/Morgan character and the daughter - I’m a 50 year old Labour voting ex London liberal, my 25 year old DD is a very woke, hard left pan sexual who’s currently dating a biologically male gender fluid individual called Katie. I know our relationship isn’t the norm but I personally found it very relatable - the previously woke generation becoming the new establishment dinosaurs & in turn the rather spoilt younger generation not wholly recognising their privilege & quite how amusing they can be in all their fire and earnestness!

Also I’d respectfully disagree on Margaret Atwood - Cats Eyes & The Blind Assassin & The Robber Bride are all good reads!

@Binterested Oh god, you have articulated that so well. Many of the other characters felt deliberately counter-cultural in some ways whereas the banker (Carole?) and the teacher (Shirley?) were both naturally counter-expectations-of-black-women.

@SJaneS48 It's not so much that I didn't like or relate to the Megan/Morgan character as much as I found the writing clunky. In the other stories, Evaristo assumes a huge amount of knowledge about politics, current affairs and even high-level theoretical stuff.

For example, many characters regularly talk about their anti-Thatcher politics; she drops in the notions of 'neo-liberal' and 'marketisation' in a few places; she drops names like Gloria (Steinam), Germaine (Greer), Frantz Fanon etc. without ever explaining what Thatcher actually did, what neo-liberalisation means, or who Gloria, Germaine and Fanon actually are. I think she expects the audience to either know the answers already or be curious enough to go and find out.

Yet, when talking about the trans issue, she takes pains to explain in a great amount of detail what the debate is all about and what the key terms mean. This, for me, just didn't chime with the rest of the book's writing style as it read more like an 'Introduction to Trans/Fluidity/Identity Stuff'. But I'd have assumed that most people reading 'Girl, Woman, Other' didn't need this kind of introduction so it felt as though the pace slowed and I was being (very slowly, and very carefully) introduced to a field I already know well and have formed opinions about. The online, messenger exchange as the format (rather than a more lyrical narrative) for this chapter was also out-of-step with the rest of the book I felt.

@Binterested Oh god, you have articulated that so well. Many of the other characters felt deliberately counter-cultural in some ways whereas the banker (Carole?) and the teacher (Shirley?) were both naturally counter-expectations-of-black-women
And yet these two characters, surely, were the most unhappy of the whole book. They definitely didn't get happy endings; Carole's gang rape, her sense of discomfort; Shirley's feeling of disappointment and then her husband having an affair with her mother. Actually that was the bit I found possibly most unbelievable and a bit odd; also I wondered about the story of Amma's best friend (forget her name) who is swept off to live on the women's commune.
I did really like it but did also feel it pushed so hard to portray every possible aspect of what it is to be a woman and yet for all these women to be connected, which was overcontrived for me. I would've preferred it if they hadn't had to have that connection.

@CaptainNelson You're absolutely right though I didn't get a sense from the book that these two were the most unhappy or that their trauma was any worse than other's (the gang rape, for me, absolutely was the worst thing to happen to any of the characters but was also located as 'just another terrible thing that happens to women' which I have mixed feelings about). Shirley certainly finishes the book with a real sense of contentment I thought.

Yeah, Dominique (the best friend) was a bit unrealistic and I guess typified the 'all's well that ends well' kind of vibe of the book that I didn't really like. I loved the sound of the women's commune but I was a bit disappointed with her violent partner. It read a bit like 'don't forget women can be controlling and perpetrators of violence too' which I get but I also didn't think was necessary in a book centering women and women's experiences. I'd have preferred to hear from a woman suffering domestic violence at the hands of a man (far far far far more common and realistic) or, if we did have to have a female perpetrator, to hear from the perpetrator herself.

Not read it yet but going back to what the Op said re the author writing only for clever people, there is probably something in that.
I heard Bernadine Evararisto on a radio 4 book program and she was very sneery about crime novels and ppl who read them. The radio host was rather embarrassed as I remember.

I thought it would pull together more at the end, and it left me feeling a bit like it was a series of short stories, rather than a novel. I loved the stories though.

@YogiMatte I must catch up on that programme, I'd be interested to hear what she's like in person.

@Bouncycastle12 I agree it was more like 12 short stories. It's not a genre I particularly enjoy but I liked it in this format, the characters weaving in and out of each others' lives made them feel more connected rather than discrete stories.

I'm onto 'Blonde Roots' now which I'm absolutely loving

If you like the book, you might be interested in the Edinburgh Book Festival event where Evaristo speaks to Nicola Sturgeon - it's online this year and the recording of the event is free to view on the EBF website.

I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t find the characters interesting or the book original. I felt like I had the read the book before and was just bored.

I attended a reading Bernadine Evararisto gave this year and she made a big deal of not saying hello to any fans (offering selfies to people connected to the venue but not to ordinary fans). I really went of her after that, and as a consequence found it hard to connect with GWO.

Have just started reading it - it was on offer in Tesco - and am surprising myself by how much I'm enjoying it so far as, like others, I thought that the style would be annoyingly try-hard (I loathe Ulysses, for example). I do like the way she gently satirises the painfully woke, when Courtney demolishes Yazz's "check your privilege" line, for example. That made me laugh because I've seen posters on here using that line and thinking they're so clever and original in doing so 😂

However, now I've read that she's sneery about people who read crime novels, I'm disappointed as I love reading them.

It was good, I didn't LOVE it, I did like how the stories were interwoven, and I did like the feeling of it being 12 short stories with a thread running between them. But I LOVED The Testaments.

I don't think it will age well. It is too rooted in what is today's zeitgeist. I enjoyed bits of it, but it is something that has stayed with me.

I didn't read it but I got it on Audible so wasn't aware of the "form". I wonder if that would have changed my perception.

Oh I've downloaded it but can't quite get into it.
I've just finished my last book and nothing else in mind so maybe I'll give it another go.

I LOVED IT. I LOVED IT SO MUCH.
Lived in South London for 23 years, never read anything that reflected the lives of the women I know so well. I thought it was literary and genuine and not about middle class white dinner parties because QUITE honestly I'm mostly bored to death of reading about middle class white people. And also I loved the form, not just the lack of punctuation but the lack of a central character, the subversion of form. I couldn't be happier it won the Booker.

It's a proper London book isn't it @mumsthewurd ❤️❤️❤️

I liked it but I hated the lack of punctuation it just makes it harder to read. Some friends totally rave about I though.

Agree The Testaments was a good story but wasn't a booker winner.

I'm about three chapters in and struggling, but will persevere. I found the punctuation in Normal People hard going for the same reason (no speech marks) but persevered and ended up liking it.