WHITESTONE BOOK CLUB
BOOK REVIEW July 2025
GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernadine Evaristo Booker Prize Winner 2019
Filled with life and energy, Girl, Woman,
Other follows twelve characters- mostly black
women, through stories of pain, joy and friendship.
It explores Britain’s social history over more than a century through the interconnected lives of the
characters.
It is a vivid description of modern British life with themes of identity, race, feminism, gender,
sexuality, history, economics, politics, love, and
patriarchy and how these define the experiences of the women in the novel.
Evaristo uses minimal punctuation and fluid
paragraphs, disconcerting to most of us at first, yet the text has a flow and pace that made the book easy to read. The novel progresses with twists and turns, culminating in a surprise ending.
It unites poetry, social history and women’s voices with humour and complexity and the characters seem to step off the page fully formed. It vibrantly describes a contemporary Britain most of us rarely see or have experienced. It covers big and
potentially upsetting topics like abuse, drug use, radicalism, gender and race, while simultaneously spending time on the small details that make it so compelling.
The book was highly rated by the majority of
members, - brilliant writing, interesting storytelling, lots of humour, difficult to relate to the experiences of the characters, eye opening, interesting structure, a book that makes you think about today’s society and how it has changed in the last decades,
wonderful book, fragmented, rich in content. We had a lively discussion!
At our next meeting on July 14th we will review Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier.
Jane Rose
