Girl, Woman, Other

Girl, Woman, Other is a multi-faceted story about several women—young and old—who live in Great Britain. At first glance, it seems like the novel is comprised of vignettes, but the deeper you venture into the novel, the closer these women become. Every one of the characters is connected to someone else in some way: a daughter, a friend, a lover, or a mother.

This novel is a wonderful example of what can happen in a novel in between two acts. The first act takes place before Amma’s show starts, a play she directed herself. The second act takes place after the show.

The in-between part of the novel is where you see how all of the characters are interconnected, how each of these women are a part of one another’s lives.

To see the full list of characters, go here.

I loved how immersive this novel became for me. It began to seem less like vignettes and more like an interconnection. The fusion fiction—what Bernardine Evaristo describes as “long stops, the long sentences” without using traditional sentences. She says that this helps her be inside her characters’ heads easier as well: “The form is very free-flowing and it allowed me to be inside the characters’ heads and go all over the place – the past, the present.”

I loved how immersive this novel is. It’s defiantly one I’ll re-read again.

If you enjoy reading immersive fiction, if you like to read experimental fiction, Girl, Woman, Other is for you.