2019 Booker Prize co-winner Evaristo’s novel is broken up into five chapters and an epilogue.  Each of the first four chapters describe the life of a black woman living, for the most part, in England.  The twelve women come from all walks of life.  They are gay, straight, wealthy, middle-class, poor, rural, urban, single, married, divorced, transgender, educated and uneducated.  Each woman’s voice is distinctive and each vignette is engrossing and offers the reader much food for thought.

I felt I should read Girl, Woman, Other because it had just won an esteemed literary prize; however, I was prepared to dislike it.  Twelve women-I felt I would often mix some of them up or forget about what happened to some of them.  Also, the structure of the prose is wacky-very few periods and weird paragraphs that sort of flow into each other.  I’m quite pleased that my expectations were unfounded.  Girl, Woman, Other is a wonderfully written work about twelve engaging women.