Hardcover, 480 pages
English language
Published May 2, 2019 by Hamish Hamilton.
Grace is a Victorian orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet.
Winsome is a young Windrush bride, recently arrived from Barbados.
Amma is the fierce queen of her 1980s squatters' palace.
Morgan, who used to be Megan, is blowing up on social media, the newest activist-influencer on the block.
Twelve very different people, mostly black and female, more than a hundred years of change, and one sweeping, vibrant, glorious portrait of contemporary Britain. Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.
RIch chorus of struggling and striving and femininity in black British lives loosely connected.
I was very ready not to enjoy this book. Made up of a set of short stories. Each one with a different character. It's bound to be difficult to really get into. Not a bit of it. The book still felt like a whole. Sometimes one story segues into another, other times it just the tone, the threads of thought, or contrasts between them. The chapters each focus on one person, mostly black women, and their personalities are different. Sometimes it feels a little caricatured, how complicated can you get in a few 10s of pages, but at the same time never too much and aren't we all somehow fitting one or other stereotype. A whole range of social topics: life in England as black, poor, rich, lesbian, non-binary... are played out and woven throughout the stories. An enjoyable and thoughtful read.
A magnificent novel that follows the interconnecting lives of a choir of characters in the United Kingdom. Evaristo writes in a poetic and sometimes fragmented style. I loved her voice and pen, and this book was a highlight of my reading list in 2021.
