Good morning to everyone, except the Booker judges who deemed The Testaments to be on the same level as this rich, complex, flowing, multilayered masterpiece.
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Girl, Woman, Other is a difficult book to sum up succinctly as it covers such a wide range within its pages. Hailed as ‘fusion fiction’, it follows the lives of 12 people: 11 black women and one black non-binary person, in a rather unique style.
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I’m always easily drawn in to stream-of-consciousness narratives. I find it easy to escape my own head and slip into someone else’s narrative, especially when it’s free-flowing. After a few pages I stopped noticing the lack of full stops and became completely immersed in the heads and lives of these characters.
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Each chapter had something new to offer, from struggles with motherhood, fraught relationships between parents and children, sexuality, gender, abuse, and of course, living as a black person in the UK, all of it handled with sensitivity and eloquence.
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It was difficult to choose a favourite, but I think I have to go with Megan/Morgan’s chapter, the book’s only non-binary person who hails from none other than Geordie-land - yay! I loved their journey from not even knowing that a person could be something other than just male or female as a young teen to becoming themselves.
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Honestly I loved all of the chapters, even when the characters are deeply flawed or hold questionable views, but the one sets in the North were just... *chef’s kiss*. I wanted to cry at the plight of a mother suffering with post-natal depression around the 1940s, misunderstood and shunned for it, and I also was moved by Dominique, trapped in a relationship with an abusive woman.
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Needless to say, I think this book is deserving of every inch of praise it gets, and I already can’t wait to reread it in the future!