The Vanishing Half
A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel)
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4.1 • 459 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR
2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST
“Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal
“A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
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 secretly 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.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Brit Bennett wowed us with her debut, The Mothers, and her second novel is equally riveting. The story starts in the late 1960s, when light-skinned black twins Desiree and Stella embark on starkly contrasting paths. Desiree marries “the darkest man she could find” and gets stuck in her rural Louisiana hometown, while Stella disappears to a wealthy L.A. enclave where she passes for white. Bennett moves briskly through two decades, as the fates of the sisters and their daughters become unexpectedly intertwined. Suspenseful yet tender, The Vanishing Half explores complex issues like racism, white privilege, and the many ways our identity is shaped by our origins. We’re still thinking about this stunning read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bennett (The Mothers) explores a Louisiana family's navigation of race, from the Jim Crow era through the 1980s, in this impressive work. The Vignes twins, Desiree and Stella, were born and raised in Mallard, La., the slave-born founder of which imagined a town with "each generation lighter than the one before." In the early 1940s, when the twins are little, they witness their father's lynching, and as they come of age, they harbor ambitions to get out. Desiree, the more headstrong sister, leads Stella to New Orleans when they are 16, and after a few months, the quiet, studious Stella, who once dreamt of enrolling in an HBCU, disappears one night. In 1968, 14 years later, still with no word from Stella, Desiree is back in Mallard with her eight-year-old daughter, Jude, having left her abusive ex-husband. When Jude is older, she makes her own escape from Mallard to attend college in Los Angeles. At a party, Jude glimpses a woman who looks exactly like Desiree except she couldn't be, because this woman is white. Eventually, the Vignes twins reunite, reckoning with the decisions that have shaped their lives. Effortlessly switching between the voices of Desiree, Stella, and their daughters, Bennett renders her characters and their struggles with great compassion, and explores the complicated state of mind that Stella finds herself in while passing as white. This prodigious follow-up surpasses Bennett's formidable debut.
Customer Reviews
Great Read, Some Issues
Great atmosphere, great tone, great pacing, sympathetic mostly-likeable characters, great hook and mostly satisfying conclusion.
I have two issues: one is that a character’s storyline—you’ll know who once you read it—feels a bit artificial and intrusive and serves really to make the person more interesting than he is, which is a disservice I felt to that community and cynically I wonder if it was done solely to get this book more press in woke circles.
Two: the race issue seems to get forgotten somewhat by the end. I can’t really elaborate without spoiling but one of the big hooks doesn’t result in anything too drastic in the end, which surprised me a bit.
Still, great read.
Good Book
great book, really enjoyed the multiple perspectives on the situation and felt that the book really transported me to the past
A thinker
Without being overly sensitive to racial discrimination, it simply told the story of perception while highlighting the nuances that we often take for granted. The safety in conformity, the risks in trying something new and the reassurance that we can change our narrative given the right motivation.