Girl, Woman, Other
BERNARDINE EVARISTO
(AUDIBLE, £25.99)
A total of 12 protagonists share the action in this (joint) Booker-winning novel. All are female, all are black or mixed race and all live in the UK.
The life histories of the women are book-ended by Amma’s which begins and (almost) finishes the novel. A playwright who has struggled for years on the fringe, Amma is about to attend the premiere of one of her plays at the National Theatre. Will it be a success? If so, it will be further proof that the Establishment has accepted people of her ilk: not only black but female and gay. The remaining characters’ lives interweave with hers and each other’s, sometimes significantly, sometimes not.