452 pages after completing this read, I am still waiting for the story to start.
This is a curious book, with at least a dozen protagonists – and many more secondary characters. Each segment of the novel is devoted to one protagonist. The reader learns a lot about that character, with details of how they look, dress, think, feel, their values, their principles, their backgrounds. The stories become more and more interesting as the book progresses; the earlier ones were almost more focused on issues/agenda, coming across sometimes as more crusade than story, necessarily. For all its excellent writing and attention-holding abilities, this was not a book that was ever going to become my favourite read. It is clever, honest, sharply observed, and many good things; and most of all, it is a huge privilege to be given a look into the lives of many attractive characters sympathetically rendered, but why are we being told all of this? To what purpose? It doesn’t all tie together, as one might hope for, even if the characters are related to each other. Many novels do provide side stories of flash backs, to give background to the characters; Girl, Woman, Other, has no central plotline and seems entirely comprised of backstories, hence my waiting for the story to actually begin, now I have so much background information about so many characters.
The novel tries to ensure it creates as wide a spectrum as possible of all kinds of people from many parts of the world, all colours, ages, backgrounds, sexual dispositions, religions, walks of life; a global diaspora and a rainbow. It does however, come across as rather too earnestly wrapped up in identity politics for the sake of identity politics, rather than to tell a story. For my personal tastes, there is just a little more telling than showing, than I enjoy. There is a lot of listing – despite the fact the novel clearly wants to create uncliched characters, out-of-the-box characters, non-conformist characters, it tends to list attributes and items in an almost name-dropping, touch-stone kind of way, to help the reader ‘place’ the characters by categorisation. For example, Yazz is described catching up with
the New Yorker, Observer, gal-dem, The Root, Atlantic, and the grio
p51
– so the reader gets a sense of her reading/media material. She has her own unique style,
part 90s Goth, part post-hip hop, part slutty ho, part alien
“eclectic and unpredictable taste extends beyond the electric rock riffs of prehistory to A$AP Rocky to Mozart to Stormzy to the Priests to Angelique Kidjo to Wizkid to Bey to Chopin to RiRi to Scott Joplin to Dolly Parton to AMR Diab and so on.
p53, p50
As can be seen from these page numbers, the listing tends to be thickly scattered, and can occasionally be wearying work to wade through, and dull too. And sometimes meaningless, as many cultural cues will not be accessible to many readers. It is also slightly annoying occasionally, to feel that these lists are stereotyping so glibly sometimes, for example supposedly the thoughts of a rather disillusioned teacher who wanted a different set of children to teach,
not gun welding, gum-chewing, coke-sniffing, up-the-duff, scumbag gangster thugs
p240
just a little oversimplistic, maybe.
The listing and telling tends to go on a bit. Fortunately, the characters created are interesting and likeable, very relatable and feasible, even if nowhere near as cool and interesting as they seem to find themselves. And the observation on injustices of society and privilege and so on, are all entirely valid, well made, and intended to explode myths, which they do very well. But it is somewhat in-your-face, and the novel comes across as a chance to stand on a soap box, rather than tell an interesting story in a way which beguiles, seduces, draws the reader in. That said, there is much to praise about the writing ability, for example, Evaristo can pull off some very pointed and succinct social commentary combining nuance with laudable brevity, such as
Mum wasn’t the only half-caste in Aberdeen in the thirties and forties, but she was rare enough to be made to feel it
p9
Sometimes however, I was left wondering at some obvious gaps in analysis; for example, a passage that read,
winter, it’s black slacks, either baggy or tight depending on whether she’s a size 12 or 14 that week (a size smaller on top)
p3
I did wonder why Evaristo didn’t use this to point out that the standard shop sizes are based on Caucasian body types, and so it is not that women of different races are different sizes on top and on the bottom, but that they intrinsically don’t fit the same body shapes necessarily as the default race many British dress sizes cater to. One would imagine this is exactly the kind of political point the book would include. So sometimes, some silences and elisions are puzzling, for such an articulate and verbose book.
However, one thing this book definitely does, is show that there is a massive diversity of people in UK, diversity in terms of racial mixes, dispositions, class of course, nationalities, genders, lifestyles, and etc., which hopefully, having chronicled so many differences in such delightful detail, will encourage Britons to stop universalising and appreciate their plurality, even if so much of that plurality is unseen, unknown. It is therefore a book I hope many people will read. It is the kind of book I would heartily recommend to anyone willing to take it on. It is the kind of book I want to flood libraries with.
It is a ‘heavy’ book in the sense of being very intense and serious – but for many excellent reasons. I am very glad I have read this book, which for all its political weight, was not at all a difficult read. It was smoothly and thoughtfully written, deftly depicting societal complexities and critiquing racisms and discriminations. I doubt I could think of a book on diversity which is quite as comprehensively inclusive. It is a huge achievement. Girl, Woman, Other had a lot to say which I hope many people will listen to. But I am left just a little sorry I did not manage to enjoy this book as much as it deserves; as much as the issues it raises deserves.
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