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Bernardine Evaristo calls Girl, Woman, Other a fusion fiction, and the novel is formally innovative, with unconventional treatment of line breaks, capitalization, and punctuation. This eBook edition is correctly formatted as per the author’s intentions.
National Bestseller
Winner of the Booker Prize 2019
Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019
Named One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2019
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Vogue, Seattle Times, Literary Hub, Guardian, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, Kirkus Reviews, Shelf Awareness, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Amazon, Washington Independent Review of Books, New Statesman, Evening Standard, and the Daily Telegraph
“Exuberant, capacious, and engaging … Plumbing the many dimensions of her characters’ lives, Evaristo revels in universals and singularities alike … The final scene triumphantly pulls together the novel’s dominant themes.”
—Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe
“A big, busy novel with a large root system … Evaristo has a gift for appraising the lives of her characters with sympathy and grace while gently skewering some of their pretensions … Evaristo’s lines are long, like Walt Whitman’s or Allen Ginsberg’s, and there are no periods at the ends of them. There’s a looseness to her tone that gives this novel its buoyancy. Evaristo’s wit helps too.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times
“Each of these characters—and indeed the doting spouses, or abusive girlfriends, or foul-mouthed school chums, or lecherous preachers, or the rest of the human parade—feels specific, and vibrant, and not quite complete, insofar as the best fictional characters remain as elusive and surprising as real people are. This is a feat; the whole book is … Evaristo is a gifted portraitist, and you marvel at both the people she conjures and the unexpected way she reveals them to you … Yes, prizes are silly. But sometimes they’re deserved.”
—Rumaan Alam, New Republic
“[Girl, Woman, Other is] about almost everything. Politics, parenthood, sexuality, racism and colorism, immigration, domestic violence, infidelity, friendship, love, all the ways we misunderstand each other, the way life surprises us with its unfolding. Bernardine is here to turn on the lights, give you your money’s worth, and let you decide for yourself.”
—Marion Winik, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Compulsively readable … There’s something truly pleasurable to watching a virtuoso at work, and Evaristo’s ability to switch between voices, between places, and between moods brings to mind an extraordinary conductor and her orchestra.”
—Rhian Sasseen, Paris Review
“Girl, Woman, Other changed my thinking.”
—Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement
“Not just one of my favorite books of this year, but one of the most insightful books I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading … Inspired.”
—Nicola Sturgeon, Guardian
“Readers should put down whatever book they’re reading and immerse themselves in this one. Bernardine Evaristo is the writer of the year. Girl, Woman, Other is the book of the decade.”
—Robert Allen Papinchak, Washington Independent Review of Books
“Magnificent … Both contemporary and timeless. There is room for everyone to find a home in this extraordinary novel. Beautiful and necessary.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Evaristo beguiles with her exceptional depictions of a range of experiences of black British women … A stunning powerhouse of vibrant characters and heartbreaks.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Girl, Woman, Other, the intermingling stories of generations of black British women told in a gloriously rich and readable free verse, will surely be seen as a landmark in British fiction.”
—Justine Jordan, Guardian
“Exuberant, bursting at the seams … In Evaristo’s eighth book she continues to expand and enhance our literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read.”
—Sarah Ladipo Manyika, New Statesman
“Courageous … [Readers] will be entertained, educated, and riveted.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Brims with vitality … The form [Evaristo] chooses here is breezily dismissive of convention. The flow of this prose-poetry hybrid feels absolutely right, with the pace and layout of words matched to the lilt and intonation of the characters’ voices … She captures the shared experience that make us, as she puts it in her dedication, ‘members of the human family.’”
—Emily Rhodes, Financial Times
“The voices of black women come to the fore in a swirl of interrelated stories that cover the past century of British life. Wide-ranging, witty and wise, it’s a book that does new things with the novel form.”
—Sunday Times
“Evaristo is known for narratives that weave through time and place with crackling originality. Girl, Woman, Other is no exception.”
—Vogue
“A magnificent read from a writer with a gift for humanity.”
—Observer
“Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life.”
—Ali Smith, author of Spring
“There is an astonishing uniqueness to Bernardine Evaristo’s writing, but especially showcased in Girl, Woman, Other. How she can speak through twelve different people and give them each such distinct and vibrant voices is astonishing. I loved it. So much.”
—Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie
“Hilarious, heart-breaking, and honest. Generations of women and the people they have loved and unloved—the complexities of race, sex, gender, politics, friendship, love, fear and regret. The complications of success, the difficulties of intimacy. I truly haven’t enjoyed reading a book in so long.”
—Warsan Shire, author of Teaching My Grandmother How to Give Birth
“Bernardine Evaristo’s books are always exciting, always subversive, a reminder of the boundless possibilities of literature and the great worth in reaching for them. Her body of work is incredible.”
—Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People
Island of Abraham
Lara
The Emperor’s Babe
Soul Tourists
Blonde Roots
Hello Mum (Quick Reads)
Mr Loverman
GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
Bernardine