Girl, Woman, Other

I have always been fond of reading books that most resemble real life. That isn’t to say I don’t enjoy the occasional dip into fantasy and sci-fi. But if you ask me my favourite themes or genre, I would say: people. Human beings and their interpersonal relations, their slog through life and their experiences is what most interests me in a book. When I said I love the themes of real life I don’t necessarily mean realism. Because I love the weird and often sinister world of Haruki Murakami the most. It’s all very confusing I know. But I want to talk about my favourite book of 2020 today, that personifies everything I love and all that I miserably failed to explain just now, in so many words.

“Welcome to Britain and twelve very different people- mostly women, mostly black- who call it home.”

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. The book won the Booker Prize for 2019 and it is rightly deserving of the prize. The story is about 12 women and their very personal journeys, their struggles, accomplishments, heartbreaks and enlightenment. I came across the book during one of my monthly scouts at a local bookstore before this damn virus forced us to become recluses. I bought it because I had been wanting to read more from women writers and this seemed like the perfect start. Best decision of the year.

This isn’t going to be a proper review per se. I’m just writing to make sense of how this book provided me with a fresh perspective. What I loved most about this book is the writing and how distinct the character voices are. Sometimes I had trouble grasping that this is written by the same person when it switched to another character’s chapter. That is what good writing is. All of the stories have so much warmth and heart and fiery wisdom that reading this made me a lot more educated than I was before, intellectually, emotionally, socially and otherwise. The young Yazz learns about the truth behind privilege and I learned with her. With Amma I experienced what it means to follow your heart and be irrefutably passionate when it comes to your aspirations, and as Carol runs away from her terrible past in the pursuit of a better future, she changes and we see it’s not always bad to.

This book is so rich in the wisdom of ages through its vibrant characters that you will not be able to put it down. At 452 pages, it is a real page turner and I read it in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down. I feel that a really good book is one that makes you feel the most complex of emotions as well as something as simple and pure as joy throughout. Girl, Woman, Girl is absolutely that book.

I also gifted this to my sister and she loved it. It’s a book that everyone should read irrespective of gender, cultural backgrounds or geographical demarcations.

Favourite quotes

1. What matters most to me, is that I know how I feel, and the rest of the world might catch up one day, even if it’ll be a quiet revolution over longer than my lifetime, if it happens at all.
2. Dora said there was no such thing as objective truth and if you think something’s good because it speaks to you, it is.
3. She feels like she’s going to the ends of the earth, while simultaneously returning to her beginnings.