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Girl, Woman, Other
Girl, Woman, Other
Jul 11, 2025 10:44 AM

Author:Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other

THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER & BOOKER PRIZE WINNER

*One of Goodreads Most Popular Books of the Past Decade*

This is Britain as you've never read it.

This is Britain as it has never been told.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

'The most absorbing book I read all year' Roxane Gay

'[Bernardine Evaristo] is one of the very best that we have' Nikesh Shukla

'Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity' Nicola Sturgeon

'A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle

'Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life' Ali Smith

'Exceptional. You have to order it right now' Stylist

Reviews

Give [Evaristo] more prizes! All the prizes! It has the pace of a whistle stop tour and yet it seems no detail of the myriad of lives we encounter is missed.

—— Graham Norton via Twitter

If you haven't discovered [Evaristo] yet, I urge you to read all and any of her books. Devoured one a day already and ordered more. Hilarious, compassionate, moving and brutally honest.

—— Richard E Grant via Twitter

Beautifully interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain. The characters are so vivid, the writing is beautiful and it brims with humanity.

—— Nicola Sturgeon via Twitter

Weaves through time and space with crackling originality

—— Vogue

Exuberant, bursting at the seams in delightful ways... Evaristo continues to expand and enhance our literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read

—— New Statesman

An exceptional book that unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond. Order it right now

—— Stylist

Evaristo's prose hums with life as characters seem to step off the page fully formed. At turns funny and sad, tender and true, this book deserves to win awards

—— Red

Brims with vitality

—— FT

With this rich composition, Evaristo deserves a toast

—— Literary Review

Masterful... A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain

—— Elle

'Girl, Woman, Other is about struggle, but it is also about love, joy and imagination.

—— Guardian

Threads together the diverse life stories of 12 black British women in ways that deliberately resist categorisation

—— Metro

Such a satisfying read, funny and true, the characters are so real you feel you know them already

—— Miranda Sawyer via Twitter

A warm, humorous and ambitious novel, and one that is enjoyably playful in style. It is both a product of its time and unlike any book ever written about Britain

—— Economist

My favorite book of 2019 . . . the most absorbing book I read all year. This novel is a master class in storytelling. It is absolutely unforgettable. When I turned the final page, I felt the ache of having to leave the world Evaristo created but I also felt the excitement of getting to read the book all over again. It should have won the Booker alone. It deserves all the awards and then some.

—— Roxanne Gay

'Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo is the best book in recent years to have embodied the idea that there are as many ways to be joyful as there are to be Black. Polyphonic and nuanced, it celebrates the lives of Black British women rather than commiserating with them, which is a crucial - and rare - distinction.'

—— Sara Collins

Powerful… unsettling… humorous and full of sharply observed vignettes.

—— Independent

The Bass Rock is a gripping, moving insight into the age-old issue of toxic masculinity and the sixth sense that women have evolved to keep them safe.

—— Stephen McGinty , Sunday Times

Evie Wyld’s powerful new novel…[is] a feminine counterforce to the masculine violence that pulses viscerally throughout… No wonder Wyld’s rage erupts from the page as she bears witness to the women who fail to survive and searches for ways that others might.

—— Emily Rhodes , Spectator

Evie Wyld is one of our most exciting young writers and her latest book is being touted as her breakthrough. An epic novel.

—— Metro

Evie Wyld…[is] one of our most distinctive and vital voices.

—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

Wyld is the most stupendous of writers, daring, heartfelt, explosive. The Bass Rock reminds us of all her power and brilliance, it thrums with an anger it is impossible not to feel.

—— Daisy Johnson

The Bass Rock is a multi-generational modern gothic triumph. It is spectacularly well-observed, profoundly disquieting and utterly riveting. Like all Evie Wyld's work it is startlingly insightful about psychological and physical abuse. It is a haunting, masterful novel.

—— Max Porter

A brutal portrait of male violence, as unchanging down the centuries as the coastal rock of the title… Cleverly constructed, full of electric scene-making, and harnessing an eerie energythe novel ends in hope.

—— Anthony Cummins , i

Everything [Evie Wyld] has published has left me excited and slightly (very) envious of her ability… And then came The Bass RockSomething extremely special… The book takes on an immense power. This is the best book of the #MeToo eraAn absolute blinder.

—— Fran Slater , Bookmunch

Vividly told and compellingThe Bass Rock isbeautifully written and powered by blistering force and righteous anger.

—— Alice O'Keefe , Bookseller

Evie Wyld is exceptionally good at the gruesome… Her bewitching third novelThe Bass Rock is beautifully written and its particular brand of macabre is all Evie Wyld’s own. The tension, foreboding and sense of inevitability are hard to shake off, even once the final page is turned. Its atmosphere is so powerful that you feel you need to go for a walk afterwards.

—— Cressida Connolly , Literary Review

A dark, gristly marvel of a novel. The Bass Rock held me in thrall from cover to cover. Evie Wyld is a gothic genius: her narrative of the violence inflicted on women throughout the centuries and the seething, female anger left in its wake left me with a deep sense of disquiet that will doubtless remain for years to come.

—— Hannah Kent

A fierce novel exploring the subjugation of – and violence against – women through the ages.

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

I savoured this wonderful novel; it is so extraordinarily clear-eyed and vivid, sharply disturbing yet deeply compassionate. What an amazing achievement.

—— Megan Hunter

Wonderfully subtle and magnificently savage.

—— Claire Fuller

Evie Wyld's vivid, visceral writing has long been in a class of its own – and as beautiful as it is terrifying, as moral as it is furious, The Bass Rock is her at her unflinching best.

—— Melissa Harrison

Amazingly good. The Bass Rock will fill the air around you with angry ghosts and you will be glad in their company.

—— Adam Foulds

Wyld’s The Bass Rock is her third novel and best so farthis is Wyld’s masterpiece – as majestic and monumental as the landmark it’s named after.

—— Alex Preston , Observer, *Books to Look Our For in 2020*

A bewitching and atmospheric novel, laced with dread. It reveals the haunted house of society, with its echoes of damaged and extinguished lives, but is also illuminated by beautiful observation about people, and their capacity for both violence and empathy.

—— James Scudamore

I loved The Bass Rock and found it menacing, sophisticated, magical and also very funny – the best book yet by a wonderful writer.

—— Anjali Joseph

Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock sounds fascinating… Wyld has a luminous prose style, and to see how she copes with 300 years and Scottish doubleness (or tripleness) is high on my list of “to reads”.

—— Stuart Kelly , Scotland on Sunday

Beautifully written, [The Bass Rock] is a reminder of female folklore and the power of giving words to women.

—— Stylist *10 glorious new books to buy this March*

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

—— William Jolt , Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

—— Julie Vuong , Skinny

[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

—— Charlotte Cripps , Independent

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppressionViolenceruns through the book like veins in marbleVivid and gripping.

—— Irish Times

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

—— Joanne Finney , Good Housekeeping

Evie Wyld’s passion for horror shines through in the setting of this novel.

—— Chiara Rimella , Monocle

Utterly enthralling… [Wyld’s] eye for human foibles and idiosyncrasy is incredibly sharp, and this novel once again exhibits her bravura way with narrative structure… Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated.

—— William Boyd , Sunday Times

[An] intensely absorbing gothic novel, which weaves together the fate of three women across three centuries. That it can also comfortably accommodate episodes of off-the-wall, Fleabag-esque hilarity confirms the acclaimed Wyld's brilliance.

—— Stephanie Cross , Daily Mail *Best of Summer Books*

Wyld's thought-provoking plots separate this book from many others on the shelves... Wyld's three narratives are artfully crafted to suit the shifting time frames.

—— Scottish Field

Wyld's ingeniously linked narratives weave a haunting tale of fear and defiance.

—— Jane Shilling , Daily Mail

A novel of such subtlety and hope

—— Ross Raisin, author of A NATURAL , Observer, *Summer Reads of 2022*
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