When my daughter and a librarian friend recommend the same book, I know it’s got to be good. And The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is. I’d even say it’s great. Bennet tells an interesting story that explores the influence of race, family, and personal history on identity.
Everyone who lives in Mallard, Louisiana has fair skin but is still black, and therefore still subject to the prejudice of 1950s America. When they are just 16, identical twins Stella and Desiree Vignes disappear from Mallard without explanation. Years later, when Desiree returns to Mallard with a very dark skinned daughter, the people from her hometown wonder where’s she’s been, why is her child SO DARK, and where is her sister, Stella? Only later will they learn how Stella abandoned her family and her history for “freedom”.
I listened to the audiobook, which was well done. My fellow book club members thoroughly enjoyed The Vanishing Half, saying they couldn’t put it down, and it had them thinking about the characters for days after they finished reading. The Vanishing Half won the Goodreads Choice Award for Historical Fiction in 2020.
What I liked
The prose of The Vanishing Half is beautiful and accessible. Bennett doesn’t follow a chronological timeline, but collapses the years to share important events in the life of each main character, jumping around from the 1950s to the 1990s.
The characters are interesting and multidimensional, and although the main focus of the novel is the disconnect between the twin sisters after one vanishes, all of the main characters in the story have a “half” that has vanished or that they hide. Two of my favorite characters are marginalized black men, one a former convict and one transgender, who would most likely be shunned by society but are two of the most loyal, loving, and compassionate characters in the entire novel.
The Vanishing Half explores themes of finding oneself and defining oneself in relation to family, history, race, and sexual identity. Some characters are transgender or practice cross dressing, and their stories blended in beautifully with the themes of the novel. I am not black or transgender, but reading this book helped me understand, just a little more, how it might feel if I was.
What I didn’t like
Not much. Some reviewers, as well as some of my fellow book clubbers, thought the ending left too much unresolved. But I thought the novel ended as it should, leaving us with some answers and even more questions about how we define ourselves and what is most important to us.
Recommendation
I highly recommend The Vanishing Half in print or audio.
Have you read The Vanishing Half or Brit Bennet’s other novel, The Mothers? If so, what did you think?
Thanks for getting nerdy with me!
