I put this book down after spending 452 pages reading about lesbians, transexuals, polyamorous people, gender non-conformists, black feminists, white feminists, gay men, transvestites and I was left with one overarching feeling: we're all the same. No matter how one identifies or one's orientation, we are all people who want to be loved, who have feelings, who suffer, who experience joy.This message that we’re more alike than we might believe is brought home at the end of the novel where after being shocked by the results of a DNA test, one of the characters notes “if there’s one thing she’s learned in the past forty-eight hours, anyone can be a relative.” Modern DNA tests increasingly prove that race is a social construct, created to oppress certain people. Who among us can say we are purebloods? This message is further advanced by the discussions of gender, mainly, that like race, gender might just be a social construct. Yes, we are born male or female, but femininity and masculinity are defined by culture.Where the book really shines is in Evaristo’s discussion of feminism. After swimming through the fascinating worlds of the LGBTQ community, and coming to understand that no trans person can speak for any other trans person, that the individuals making up the LGBTQ community are as unique from each other as anyone else, the real message of the novel starts to shine through. It’s a novel about feminism. And it takes this concept to a new level.The novel reveres feminism and feminists while it acknowledges the negative cultural attitudes held of feminists from the 1960's. The new feminist is unapologetic and willing to state who she is. This book will definitely force you to consider your own beliefs about where you stand vis-a-vis our patriarchal culture. Even Amma, the main character who is a radical feminist and lesbian, questioned whether she was a true feminist. “Yazz was the miracle she never thought she wanted, and having a child really did complete her, something she rarely confided because it somehow seemed anti-feminist.” (p. 36)Yazz, 19-years-old, challenges her mother to broaden her definition of feminism. “[F]eminism is so herd-like, Yazz told her, to be honest, even being a woman is passé these days, we had a non-binary activist at uni called Morgan Malenga who opened my eyes, I reckon we’re all going to be non-binary in the future, neither male nor female, which are gendered performances anyway, which means your women’s politics Mumsy, will become redundant…” (p. 39)The idea that feminism goes beyond gender politics, because gender is really irrelevant, is just one of the revolutionary concepts Evaristo throws at us, willy-nilly.The novel begins and ends the opening night of a performance of Amma’s play. Amma’s been rejected from the National stage for 30 years. Her plays are revolutionary—too outrageous. Finally, she gets her shot. The play is about Amazon women warriors who have female slaves and guard the palace because men cannot be trusted not to cut off the king’s head or castrate him, who fought their neighbors and the French who come to colonize the country, where male babies are killed. The hero is a female warrior cast out because she cannot bear the king a child, and becomes the fiercest warrior, fighting wars that include fighting off slave ships looking for captives for the American slave trade. Amma and Yazz fear the critics who could derail her longed-for success. I won’t spoil it by expressing their opinions.The novel is divided into five chapters and an epilogue. In each chapter, except the final “After-party” one, three women are described. The characters are rich and generally bold, different from characters we generally see in literary fiction. Different in that they all struggle with feminism, their identities, and their sexual orientation. While the chapters at first glance seem they could be separate stories, the women are all related in some fashion, whether through blood, friendship, or mentorship.My favorite section is Chapter 4 about Megan/Morgan. Megan is a little confused. She ends up in online chatrooms trying to understand herself. She meets Bibi. During their on-line chats, we get an education about the differences between transsexuals and transgendered people, and especially about feminism in the LGBTQ community.“So Bibi had been born a man and was now a woman…and Megan was a woman who wondered if she should have been born a man, who was attracted to a woman who’d once been a man, who was now saying gender was full of misguided expectations anyway even though she herself had transitioned from male to female this was such head fuckery.”Head fuckery indeed. So many ideas expressed in the novel are head fuckery. Yet somehow these people muddle through, make mistakes, and figure out who they are. This novel is unabashedly contemporary.It’s no wonder it made the Booker Prize Shortlist for 2019.