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.
Akintunde Akinsola (verified owner) –
The Vanishing Half is a book that is both surreal and intimidating at the same time. Brit Bennett in this book, put words that question your emotions into motion. Like the mixed feeling of anger or sadness that might be targeted at the twin who decided to close the page on her family and pretend to be someone else.
The power in this book makes you wonder what life on the other end would have looked liked for you just as you wonder while reading the book what would have been if Stella Vignes had not gone over or if her twin Desiree had not returned to Mallard, their hometown.
You never know what turn the book will take as it both mellows and not make the story a big deal even though it is. The mystery surrounding the characters makes you want to build a story of your own explaining their mystery shrouded existence.
It is a book that makes you want to catch your breath and at the same time, you do not want to put it down.
Touching and unapologetically riveting. This is a book that examines the secrets that keeps life rolling along- race, identity, family and marriage.