Best of the Best Book Club: "Girl, Woman, Other" by Bernardine Evaristo

Join Coronado Public Library's newest book club, the Best of the Best! We meet regularly on the 4th Tuesday of each month to discuss books that have won major awards. Receive reminder emails about our meeting by registering below. Registration is not required. 

In May, we will be discussing the 2019 Booker Prize Winner, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.

The 12 central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives. Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity. Her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools. Carole, one of Shirley's former students, is a successful investment banker. Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter's lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class.

Written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

Place the book on hold on the Coronado Public Library catalog by clicking here or check out the e-book or audiobook on the Libby or Cloud Library apps.