The Vanishing Half: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2021
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By Brit Bennett
avg rating
5 reviews
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER
- NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE
‘An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book’ Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019
‘Epic’ Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine
‘Favourite book [of the] year’ Issa Rae
Perfect for fans of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larson.
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. Ten 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’ story lines 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.
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A story that shows how we can never really escape our past.
St Just Thursday Evening Reading Group 1st December 2022.
The Vanishing Half. Brit Bennett.
This was a book which engendered a lot of discussion, though hardly any disagreement. The group spent some time talking about our impressions (as a European audience) of the descriptions of Black people, “passing” as white. One reader pointed out how common this still is – the number of products for skin lightening and hair straightening attests to this, as well as different forms of surgery being fairly common – the vast majority of these being to enable transition from Black to white, not the other way round.
We all enjoyed reading this book, found it beautifully written, easy to read, and with multiple issues. The dialogue was thought to be very good, representing the speech patterns of the people of Mallard, Louisiana (as far as we know). A book with a huge scope, including many different kinds of people, strata of society, living conditions, attitudes to difference, and life goals, all presented in a convincing fashion
We agreed that this narrative was very cleverly written in a way which blurred the boundaries between genders and races. Some readers thought that, possibly, it didn’t go into the characters’ dilemmas sufficiently. We discussed how several of them, notably Stella and Reese, are pretending to be something they are, or were, not. Reese, on the one hand, was comfortable with his new identity as a woman; Stella, on the other, was actively denying her Black heritage. Reese however was not honest (in our opinions) with Jude, by reason of not discussing their transition. Someone suggested, though, that there might be another way of looking at this: Reese did tell Jude about his intention to save money for his surgery, and she chose to help him as much as she could; she also complied with his request not to explore his body. Possibly some of the intentions and points of view were, in fact, discussed by the characters, even though the reader doesn’t hear about it. Also, at least in the earlier time periods covered by the book, people would have been much less likely to hold conversations about sexuality and gender roles.
The character of Early was interesting – a man who was rejected by his own family as a child (because there were too many children) and fostered with another; he worked as a private investigator who spent a lot of his time looking for people. Jude worked as a fingerprint analyst. Both of these characters are thus looking for identities, as are Stella, Reese, and possibly others.
A fascinating book, raising important issues without making judgements. And an invitation for us to reflect on how times have changed during our lifetimes, and how far understanding and tolerance of difference have developed. Not always a comfortable read, tut really, a book about people’s struggle to accept other people’s rights to live their lives peacefully and in the way that feels right to them.
Loved it loved it loved it!
A truly inspirational book looking at racial identity and posing the questions of the reader about colourism and of the external eyes making judgements about a person’s worth based on their colour.
When one of the lead characters just decides she is going to be white and walk into a department store you ask yourself has modern Britain or more appropriately America moved on from racial segregation and tribalism.
A really well written and structured book, weaving together several disparate lives and showing how the repercussions of our decisions reverberate through the decades.
A must read.
