Verse novel review: The Emperor's Babe (2001) by Bernardine Evaristo.
Hi everyone. I am here with my first review of the month for Bernardine Evaristo, who as I mentioned is author of the month. This is not my first review of hers as I did review Girl, Woman, Other (2019) back in 2023. That was an incredible work of fiction which truly captivated me. The Emperor's Babe (2001) unlike that novel is a verse novel. This is a novel which shines amongst a lot of other books I have read. What caught my eye was reading the blurb. Now I know they say you should never judge a book by it's cover but when I am informed that a novel ‘sings a song of womanhood and survival’... I get an impression it might well be my kind of book. That and the mention of ‘drag queens’ drew me to it. As for having read the book. It really wasn't what I expected. I gasped, I laughed, I ewed, I tutted, I pondered and then my mind had "NOOO" darting about it. I am not going to spoil anything here but as far as novels go, this quite possibly had the most unexpected ...