The Vanishing Half

 

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Fiction

2020 Penguin Audio

Read by Shayna Small

Finished on March 28, 2021

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? 

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

I spent the past couple of weeks listening to The Vanishing Half, which my book club chose for our April discussion. It's been a few years since I read Brit Bennett's debut novel (The Mothers), which I greatly enjoyed, so I was excited to read her new book, which has garnered high praise from numerous readers and landed on several bestseller lists. (It was named a best book of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon and Goodreads, to name just a few.) And yet, once again, I'm in the minority. It's a moderately compelling (and timely) read, but I don't think it's outstanding or brilliant. Bennett's writing is fairly straightforward and I was quickly drawn into the narrative, but the abrupt timeline jumps and the flat characters left me unimpressed. I'm eager to hear how my book club liked this selection. With themes of race, identity, family secrets and sexuality, it should be a good discussion! 

I received a complimentary copy from Libro.fm. All thoughts and opinions are my own.