The Vanishing Half — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Brit Bennett
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Pages: 343

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): 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.

First Impressions

The cover of this book immediately caught my eye. It is so colorful and unlike anything I had seen before. Then with the buzz that this book garnered I knew I needed to check it out. Once I read the summary I was sold. So, pretty much the strongest first impression that you could make.

What I thought

Wow. I totally get the hype behind this book.

Desiree and Stella are identical twins. They grew up in a small town outside of New Orleans called Mallard that is so small it’s not even on a map. The other unique part about Mallard is that it prides itself on being an all light skinned African American community. At 16, the girls run away from Mallard and make a life in New Orleans until one twin decides to move forward in her life as white passing, while the other marries a very dark skinned man and eventually ends up back in Mallard.

The dichotomy of the lives of the twins based off of how the world perceived them was fascinating. This book addresses so many important issues and I feel like it did it so well. Not only does it address racism with black vs white, but racism within the black community as well. There were also storylines dealing with LGBT issues and privilege in general. Truly, the amount that this book tackles is astounding and the fact that it does it so well is even more amazing.

I went into this book not knowing much and was dragged into the word from page one. Both twins end up having daughters and in addition to the book switching between view points from the twins’ perspectives, there are chapters from the daughters’ perspectives too. I loved getting into everyone’s heads because their points of views varied based off of the lives they had lead and it was fascinating.

The writing was so good too. I’m always worried that books that get a lot of hype won’t live up to it and I’ll be disappointed but that was not the case with this book. I flew through it and I will definitely check out Bennet’s past and future works.

The one issue I had with this book was the ending. The entire book you are following the lives of the characters from childhood. Personally, I became very invested in all of their lives and was more than happy to see how they played out. The ending to me felt a little abrupt and unsatisfactory. I would’ve loved an epilogue for each character.