The Observer, March 2020
Girl, Woman, Other
Bernardine Evaristo
Penguin, £8.99, 464pp (paperback)
What’s left to say about Bernardine Evaristo’s brilliant Booker-winning novel, other than it’s a shame it had to share the award with Margaret Atwood’s bestselling The Testaments? Following 12 characters – in the main, black British women – it’s a compelling snapshot of gently overlapping lives that is fiercely political and feminist without resorting to polemic. These are flawed, complicated women who offer hope, love and a vision of unity, despite their differences of faith, class and age.
Damascus
Christos Tsiolkas
Atlantic, £16.99, pp432
Christos Tsiolkas’s breakthrough novel The Slap took no prisoners in skewering middle-class Australian life. Damascus is even more confrontational: a brutal vision of the world of St Paul where babies are left to die, among other barbarities on a colossal scale. Tsiolkas has admitted that Saul’s Damascene conversion is a way in which he could process his own teenage shame at his sexuality, and while this isn’t a “finding God” novel – the author is a non-believer – he is evangelical about St Paul’s beliefs in justice and compassion. The ancient setting doesn’t always marry with Tsiolkas’s modern sensibilities, and it does feel slightly earnest, but more power to him for taking such risks.
Colombia Es Pasion
Matt Rendell
Orion, £20, pp352
Last year, Egan Bernal became the first Colombian to win the Tour de France – not before time, you might say, given that the sport is ingrained in his homeland’s psyche. Matt Rendell’s passion for Colombia is evident in this wonderful sequel to Kings of the Mountains – another of his cycling books about that country. Here, he explores a new generation who have beaten poverty, violence and corruption, and can now, via two wheels, tell a story of a more peaceful, happier nation.
