I immediately fell into the rhythm of reading GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER, a novel written in a prose style with little punctual adornment whether it be periods or quotation marks. The narrative never faltered without it; the lack of stopping made the stories glide by and helped the chosen endings that employed stops reverberate on the page. This novel illustrates a myriad of British Black women in their histories and their present day lives. Evaristo made me smile wryly through much of it, both for her character connections and her witty writing. There were moments of realization and sadness and despair, too, of course, amid a rich array of remarkably rendered women.

This book reminded me of a memoir I read late last year; the memoir written in part because there were not many texts from their particular point of view, non-fiction or otherwise. In GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER, a character laments about a novel chosen by her book club in which the women "don't even get a chance to speak in the book." Evaristo gives voice to those muted Black women in fiction and represents an array of women that are all so beautifully different and then culminates in a theme of togetherness. She accomplishes this, and, in the same vein of Carmen Maria Machado's IN THE DREAM HOUSE, provides more visibility to a depiction of lesbian relationships rarely seen. And while they are very different books, they are two great works filling in literary gaps. I'm so glad to witness it.