by Bernardine Evaristo
Recently I seem to have fallen into the habit of starting my book ‘reviews’ before I have even finishes reading the book. This isn’t perhaps such a bad thing. the book is fresh in my mind, and certainly if it is one I am enjoying, I can write about it with that enthusiasm still palpable.
This novel is, of course, one of the joint Man Booker prize winners in 2019. The judges’ decision to award the prize to two writers was and is highly controversial, but I for one am very pleased that this novel made it into the winning selection. I can’t comment on the other winner, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, but I am a great fan of Atwood and listened to the BBC Radio 4 serialisation of her latest book, which had me gripped. So I am inclined to say that Atwood’s novel was as deserving of the prize as Evaristo’s.
Of course, literary prizes are about as silly as my book group’s insistence that each member should give a score for each book we read. What criteria, exactly, are we rating the book on? Still I am very pleased I decided to read Evaristo’s book. An advantage of Kindle is that you can download a ‘sample’ of a book before deciding whether you want to read it. I did so with this one, and was convinced. Then I deliberated over whether to buy the hardback version, wait four or five months for the paperback, or download the eBook. My mind was made up when Amazon for some reason offered me a £4 discount. I can honestly say that this was £5.99 very well spent.
So, to the book itself.
Each of the four chapters contains three sub-headings, and each of these, titled with the name of a woman, proceeds to tell that woman’s story. To call these stories character sketches would seem to suggest that there is no story, and indeed there isn’t a plot to the novel. But the stories of each woman are so complete, tender, funny, and compelling, that you feel you have met each individual, no matter how alien her life might be from your own. The characters in each group of three have fairly tight connections to each other; the connections across the chapters are tenuous but they do exist. In this way, Evaristo draws the reader into some very different experiences, lifestyles and even eras, without having to work to suspend disbelief. I had feared that the stories would be more disjointed, and that I might be encouraged to skip back and forth. Not a bit of it. I was engrossed and delighted from the start.
Each character (except one) is a black woman living in the UK. Most live in, or at least have a connection with, London. Some, like Winsome who returns to Barbados on her retirement, are the first generation of their family to live here. Others are several generations on. Some, like Carole, have ‘made good’ and exceeding anything their parents could have hoped for. Others, like LaTisha, disappoint their parents’ expectations. Each is her own person, determined to live her own life.
I say “her”, but Megan/Morgan, the eponymous “Other”, decides to use the pronoun “they”, and to retain an indeterminate gender. There is sex in very many guises: same-sex, heterosexual, rape, adultery, under-age… and the resulting children themselves have to sink or swim in the life they are born into.
All in all (and bear in mind I am still half-way through the last story, and there is still a wrap-up chapter and epilogue to come) this is an uplifting book. The characters are human beings, first and foremost. Dare I say that it is also an education for me, as someone who knows little about the experiences of black women in the UK or elsewhere, and must come to this knowledge primarily through my reading.
Writing this a day or two later, and I have now finished reading this superb book. Each story was interesting of itself, and the connections between the characters were subtle but just evident enough to be tangible. I was intrigued as to what the final two chapters might bring. Having now read them, I do feel that the book would not have lost anything without them – and particularly, without the Epilogue. The After-Party chapter shows us several of the characters we’ve already met, who gather at the National Theatre after the first night of Amma’s new play. No surprises here, because we already know each character’s connection with Amma and the fact that they are likely to be here together. What is interesting about this chapter is that we learn a little more – but only a little – about a couple of the male characters introduced earlier. We also find Carole finally – and inexplicably reluctantly – acknowledging the positive influence of her erstwhile teacher, Shirley, on her life. Perhaps Evaristo is trying to highlight the vast chasm between one generation and the next. Or perhaps she just wishes to shed more light on Carole and Shirley themselves. Either way, this encounter is as unsatisfactory for the reader as it apparently is for the characters themselves.
And then the Epilogue, when we learn some more about the one apparently white persona in the book’s twelve main stories. It’s neat, it’s believable (just about), but is it really necessary to round off the book in this way? I suppose that one conclusion that one can draw from this twist in the tale is that none of us really knows who we are, in terms of our genetic history. No doubt there are many, many apparently ‘white’ people whose racial makeup includes some African ancestry. It makes you stop and think.
A rug and a book 