The book is divided into four chapters, each containing episodes about three people who are connected directly to one another in some way, the majority as relatives (such as mother and daughter).

Although each character has their own chapter set across a particular time, their lives intertwine in numerous ways – from friends and relatives to chance acquaintances.

The last chapter of the book takes place at the party that follows the play's opening night, in which many of the characters are present and interact, though not necessarily knowing one another.

togetherAmong the themes explored in the characters' lives are racism, feminism, politics, patriarchy, success, relationships, gender, and sexuality.

is Obama less privileged than a white hillbilly growing up in a trailer park with a junkie single mother and a jailbird father?

Dominique's reductive view of Shirley as a "dry heterosexual schoolteacher" closes her off from discovering how similar their life experiences have been.

Suggesting a solution for Gay's new discourse for discussing inequality, Evaristo provides the narratives of these 12 characters so that readers can sincerely relate to their experiences on a humanistic level rather than reducing them to a stereotype.

The magazine's critical summary reads: "Girl, Woman, Other is "a sprawling book, but too intimate to be considered an epic" (New Republic)".

[8][9][10] Emily Rhodes of the Financial Times said that "Evaristo writes sensitively about how we raise children, how we pursue careers, how we grieve and how we love", while Johanna Thomas-Corr of The Sunday Times describes Girl, Woman, Other as "a triumphantly wide-ranging novel, told in a hybrid of prose and poetry, about the struggles, longings, conflicts and betrayals of 12 (mostly) black women and one non-binary character."

Evaristo's polyphony of voices is successful and compelling, according to Josie Mitchell of Literary Review, who writes, "The perspectives complement and contest one another, amounting to a glorious, atmospheric set of ventriloquisms.