4 March 2021, all present via Zoom, in compliance with lockdown 3.0 guidance, and with thanks to Willm
Book choice and report – AA
Chapter One
Bernardine
Bernardine
was born in Eltham to an English mother and Nigerian father
is a lifelong activist for inclusion and prolific writer, commentator and contributor, and Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel,
who won the 2019 Booker prize for Girl, Woman, Other
and enjoys experimenting with form and narrative perspective, writing this novel in a style she calls ‘fusion fiction’
what the London Review of Books calls a hybrid ‘disruptive’ style that pushes prose towards free verse, allowing direct and indirect speech to bleed into each other and sentences to run on without full stops
Bernardine has talked about people who find themselves in more than one minority or disadvantaged group, about identity, scarcity of role models, always having to prove oneself, being judged instead of listened to, becoming angry by default
and said of her Booker prize win: my win has made a difference: it’s a book by a Black British woman about Black British women
Girl, Woman, Other is her eighth novel and tells the stories of twelve women, aged 19 to 93 from a mix of cultural backgrounds, sexualities, classes and geographies and charts their struggles, hopes and intersecting lives
and explores how race, sexuality, gender, history and financial situation all intersect to define their experiences
which include hardship, prejudice and privilege, dislocation and isolation, love, friendship, and issues of identity
one of her characters, Winsome, quotes the Guyanese poet, Grace Nichols:
we the women/whose praises go unsung/whose voices go unheard
Andrew
Andrew
was also born in South London, in the same year as Bernardine, and thought Girl, Woman, Other was an exquisite tapestry of the lives the very different characters who he enjoyed meeting
and enjoyed the spare, fluid, direct style, and the clear, strong, well-painted characters – feisty, flawed and interesting, with Hattie providing a time perspective across the generations
the book full of warmth and wit, twists and turns, and many terrible events
Bernardine risked that having twelve main sequential characters might fragment the story, inhibit character and plot development, and restrict the author in terms of endings,
making it harder for the reader without a conventional plot and storyline,
but instead she sings the praises of Grace Nichols’ women and gives them voices which come through loud and clear
with powerful descriptions such as Carole arriving at Oxford, her rape at thirteen
“Carole never told a soul”
Hattie’s miscarriages and stillbirth
“a body that gave birth to death”
Winsome telling her grand-daughter Rachel of her experiences of racism when she was her age
“I was served last in whatever shop I went into, even when I was first in the queue/ cars deliberately drove into puddles when I was pushing Shirley in her black bassinet and the two boys was attached to harnesses either side of me”
John
John
enjoyed and looked forward to reading this collection of character narratives loosely linked together – akin to a collection of interrelated short stories
which captured the dilemmas of the age and the growing move to identity politics and as BE reflected the way that “feminism was on the descent, and that the vociferous multi-cultural brigade were on the ascent”
some really exotic and erotic passages – and shocks like Winsome’s affair with her son-in-law, Lennox, and her fantastic justification that “it was better to satisfy him than he left her daughter for another woman”
and insights captured in some great quotes including: the description of Amma’s no-name dad - the rather washed-up lives of exiled African politicos in the 50s and 60s - with his “sermons” during meals on the evils of capitalism and colonialism – “we were his captive congregation, being force fed his politics – the President for Life in our family”
and how Carole evolved at university, unstitched her weaves, and was invited into “family homes that were privately owned – homes without carpets on the floor (out of choice)”
and how the book ended was a very positive motif of the time we live in, and despite the changes we are all going through raw emotion and love still shine through when Barbara aka. Penelope finally meets her mum, Hattie, that “this is not about feeling something or speaking words, this is about being together”
but ended with a warning that inequality is growing globally and in the UK, where the home ownership that Carole commented on increasingly out of reach
Chapter Two
Willm
Willm
didn’t find the first chapter interesting, felt it was aimed at a different demographic
then found Dominique’s relationship with Nzinga interesting, perhaps it was the clear psychological abuse of one woman by another, as this usually portrayed as being inflicted by a man, and got really into the book (apart from all the explanations in Megan/Morgan)
up to the Epilogue in which he found Penelope’s behaviour in terms of catching and holding onto Jeremy particularly annoying and distressing, and the meeting with her mother terribly romanticised
and while he found some characters and relationships exaggerated, they did capture the rejection, exclusion and degradation and othering
overall a worthwhile, informative and educational read, though grim at times
ChrisW
ChrisW
started off enjoying the characters, especially Dominique, but as each story ended and the next started, began to tire of the style
and felt the fusion fiction style was irritating and added nothing,
there was an overdose of characters which made it hard to remember all their connections,
some Mills & Boon-like family history research in the farming family in the North East
and a rather contrived ending,
so despite enjoying the fantastic snapshots of people with very different lives from the Bath Blokes,
and the reunion at the end
was unimpressed with the ‘pastichy’ and underwhelming style of the book
MarkT
MarkT
was worried that the book was still in the charts and put off after Richard’s suggestion that it would be like Queenie,
was concerned he wouldn’t like its themes,
then really irritated by the writing style, before getting used to it
and then liking it
enjoying Carole and Hattie, the links between characters, but not the awful rape scenes and racism
though the end didn’t work for him
except Penelope’s meeting with Hattie
Chapter Three
Richard
Richard
took a long time to get into it but was glad he had as it was a good book, but not a great book (and much better than Queenie)
he thought the book was about the central quote that Yazz hears, about no one disadvantage trumping any other: “Courtney replied that Roxane Gay warned against the idea of playing ‘privilege Olympics’ and wrote in Bad Feminist that privilege is relative and contextual.”
but had a lot of issues with how that message was delivered
the characters were interesting but, particularly the arty ones, not real enough, their chapters were too short for development, like a book of short stories – too bitty
and a lot of it was “all a bit too clever, so that it became wearing.’
and despite a lot of good points about racial and gender disadvantage, there was
a lot of negativity in the relationships, which started to feel relentless,
and while the layout was SO irritating, he liked the fact that it was always written from a woman’s perspective, generally from a black woman’s, and the intergenerational aspect of many of the stories, where one could see how things that were seen as radical in one generation is not seen as that by the next generation,
how immigrants want their children to achieve better than them, but when they do, as Bummi says, “she could not have predicted it would lead to Carole rejecting her true culture”
and the discussion about whether or not it was necessary to explain difference, which he sees as vital
some of the writing was very good: “how she and Augustine had been trapped in a despair that had paralysed their ability to snap out of it, devastated by the weight of a rejection that had not been part of their dreams of migration.”
a good and interesting book with bits to commend it, but more which detract from it, so not a great book
Steve
Steve
had reservations/doubts beforehand, wasn’t ready for another Queenie, found it hard to get into, then after a couple of chapters was absolutely hooked and is thoroughly enjoying it, having got over the style which he feels helps - interesting and effective
liked a lot of the characters and their little connections and enjoyed how it was all interwoven
and the author’s ear for dialogue and brilliance in giving each character their own voice
and Dominique’s tours of London for Nzinga – Evaristo’s 1980s London felt very familiar
hasn’t finished it yet, but so far so good, a really talented writer, though perhaps taken on too great a scope and fewer than twelve characters might have been better
but a tremendously positive book, showing how times had changed since Winsome and Clovis were in the Scilly Isles, while noting there was still such a long way to go,
which adds to the importance of this book
and shining a light on difference and discrimination in an accessible way – while Evaristo’s words were unremarkable,
the way she wove them together was
a great choice
MarkW
MarkW
wasn’t so thrilled with the book and found the binary black/white distinction simplistic given the huge spectrum of people in each category
was very irritated by the stereotypical characters of the first three chapters, feeling that he was one of the bad guys
after which it got better
with him finding twelve characters was not too many, not expecting character development with so many characters, and enjoying picking up the links
and finding that the style neither added to nor detracted from the story and made
nice patterns on the page
and after the irritation with Amma and Dominique, finding Carole and Bummi interesting and refreshing, enjoying Winsome and her affair and Barbados, but then found Megan/Morgan irritating so sped read the next chapter, Hattie
before finding Grace a great character and going back and reading Hattie properly
so, a collection of chapters,
up and down with some good bits and some really irritating bits
which he scored by marking each chapter and taking the mean
Chapter Four
Chris B
ChrisB
enjoyed the book, which rolled along nicely, an easy and interesting read, making him nostalgic for London
and found the characters mostly interesting, particularly those from earlier generations (Hattie and Grace), showing well their experience of the times and their struggles as (mainly) Black women through real-sounding individuals and a cast of believable secondary characters
but found it difficult to track the relationships between characters – a character tree would have been useful
liking that the characters were recognisable and distinct from each other, though some of the writing was rather obvious and caricatured – he felt he’d heard it before:
“Yazz is reading English Literature and plans to be a journalist with her own controversial column in a globally-read newspaper because she has a lot to say and it’s about time the whole world heard her”
and
“she’s Mum’s emotional caretaker, always has been, always will be it’s the burden of being an only child, especially a girl who will naturally be more caring”
and unsure how the fusion fiction style contributed to the writing, perhaps making it more conversational
some good tensions in people’s hopes and fears and their resolution or otherwise, and an enjoyable and moving epilogue tying some loose ends together
The Book Club
The Book Club
generally enjoyed this book, many disliking the style either initially or all the way through, but finding the novel interesting, relevant, and addressing important issues with realistic characters,
some better crafted and more memorable than others
whose lives were very different from theirs
“Bummi complained that people viewed her through what she did (a cleaner) and not what she was (an educated woman)”
many admitting struggling to keep up with developments in gender and woke terminology and needing to learn new vocabulary, being picked up by their children if they are politically incorrect
having to think consciously about such things which seem to be intuitive or innate in younger people who’ve grown up in this world,
rather than the one we grew up in
and to reflect on white male middle class privilege which has made life so much easier,
and how the barriers and discrimination which are the opposite of privilege remain despite all the work of so many groups over so many decades,
because the levers of power remain in those privileged hands
“oh to be one of the privileged of this world who take it for granted that it’s their right to surf the globe unhindered, unsuspected, respected”
a book about white male privilege from Black women’s perspectives but not a negative book, a helpful, positive voice in spotlighting the issues
“white people are only required to represent themselves, not an entire race”
Epilogue
Bath Blokes Book Club
are busy making spike protein antibodies and looking forward to meeting again in person
some are also busy growing beards
most were encouraged by the positivity of the book and several scores were increased as a result of our interesting discussion
hard not to appreciate writing like
“a face that’s gone slack except for a mouth that holds all her misery like a drawstring tightened around a pouch”
or not to smile at
“did your Papa sacrifice his health so that you could become a punky Rasta person who smells?”
Scores
Andrew 9
John 8
Willm 8
MarkT 7
ChrisW 6.5
ChrisB 7
Steve 8
MarkW 5
Richard 7
Overall 7.28
