Girl, Woman, Other

Bernardine Evaristo’s Booker-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other is wonderful: such a tonic for ‘our time.’ While I found the previous Booker winner, Milkman by Anna Burns, an extraordinary achievement in sustaining a voice (dense, intense, disturbing), Evaristo’s book is just so hugely enjoyable.

It has everything: breadth, skill, generosity, vivid characterisation (as in real life, characters seem one thing at first but they deepen, become more complex, surprise us as we spend more time with them). The style works perfectly, as it wheels from paragraph to phrase back to paragraph without intervening punctuation (I promise that this is natural, not irritating and soon invisible). The book’s plenitude as it wheels through through British culture reminds me a little of Ali Smith in her seasons quartet (comments on Spring here). It ends:

this is about being

together.

No better way to finish a novel which, as so many of us are apart, lifts the spirit.

Now onto Mr Loverman.