Girl, Woman, Other

Black women’s stories have long been misread as something they are not. It is hard to write fiction without being asked: is this story about you? And does this singular tale represent the collective black female experience? Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other turns a subtle side-eye to both questions, and makes answering them an impossible task.

Her eighth novel follows 12 characters, most of them black British women, moving through the world in different decades and learning how to be. Each character has a chapter; within the chapters their lives overlap, but their experiences, backgrounds and choices could not be more different. There’s Amma, a lesbian socialist playwright, and non-binary Morgan, who uses the internet to navigate their gender identity – but also Shirley, a teacher who feels alien in Amma’s community, and Winsome, a bride who has arrived from Barbados to an unhappy marriage. Many of the characters are close – friends, relatives or lovers – while others simply visit the same theatre on the same night, or argue with each other on Twitter.