Girl, Woman, Other

By: Bernardine Evaristo

Narrated by: Anna-Maria Nabirye

Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin. 

Winner of The Booker Prize 2019

Shortlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction 2020

The Sunday Times best seller

This is Britain as you've never heard it.

This is Britain as it has never been told.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope.... 

©2019 Bernardine Evaristo (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The actress Anna-Maria Nabirye projects the characters superbly: she has a full, low timbre and a powerful directness." (The Times)

"Masterful...A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain." (Elle)  

"Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl...[It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond." (Stylist) 

A thing of beauty...

Not a review, only to say that I definitely didn’t expect it to be as remarkable.

Reader was great, very english

Loved this book , highly recommend it. Great read , wonderful characters. The trader was great. I love the English accent

Brilliant

Truly brilliant I really enjoyed it!
So much more than I thought....
The performance was also excellent.

An amazing book, a tender look into gender identity, into womanhood.

The narrator has an amazing and powerful voice that keeps you on edge until the end! Thanks again!

I couldn't put it down

Really enjoyed this book. I couldn't put it down. very different! Definitely enlightened on black,lesbian,Bi world we live in.
highly recommend this book.

A beautiful read

Wonderfully intertwined stories,with each one even mor captivating than the last. Couldn’t recommend this book more.

great perspective, bit catalogue of diversity

the narrator was great, clear and easy to listen to.

characters were all unique and well written. a very enjoyable read, but it felt at times a bit like a catalogue of diversity... like the author had a list and must have one each of all the current intersectional feminist issues represented, like a collection of dolls. I'm really grateful for the perspectives, but it felt a bit unnatural because it seemed to be trying to be an anthology of everything black and feminist and lgbti+ in one book. Really good story teller. Really good coverage of the issues at s surface level, but I probably would prefer a deeper dive into their stories. I think this could have been a series, and could have been a bit more realistic at the end about how much people really change when challenged.

Great novel - flaws in narration.

Great characters and story, but let down a bit by the narrator who, although she has a good quality voice, often pauses where she shouldn't, or doesn't pause where she should, with incorrect emphasis. Many words are mispronounced, which indicates that the narrator is not familiar with the word itself. I agree with another reviewer who says the narrator needed someone in the recording sessions to direct her performance, spot the mistakes and fix them. Surely every audiobook performance is supervised by someone other than a sound engineer? I found myself listening out for the next mistake, and the next one, But I still enjoyed the story.

Nothing happens!

So yeah. I thought this would be an interesting read, and it won The Booker. How could I go wrong, right? With one click of a button it seems. The narrator did well but the author should learn what a story is.

The premise is a good one and I liked some of the characters but absolutely nothing happens in this book. It is just about ordinary women and their ordinary struggles. I like a plot, I like a beginning middle and a satisfying end. This had nothing.

Book for the new times and a new world

I would recommend this book to women who want to explore gender identity. It has some good parts and I particularly like the ending and the linking of the stories. Sometimes you don’t know how the stories will link up but I guess that’s the beauty of the book. Sometimes I thought it was very trendy and New Age. But it’s nice to read such a book in some ways to hear how people live and experience life. Very good LGBT Book.