THE VANISHING HALF

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, 2020, 460 pp

 

Two of my reading groups picked this novel for discussion in August, but what a difference in reaction between the two groups. One was unanimous in loving it, the other was a mixture of opinions. Personally I found it brilliant.

 

The story centers around a set of female twins, not necessarily identical but born on the same day from the same mother. Their family lived in a small Louisiana town where everyone is Black though extremely light skinned. The townspeople are careful never to marry a darker skinned person even though all the surrounding towns know they are of the Negro race.

The twins, Desiree and Stella, witness the brutal murder of their father, by a white man, at a young age. At sixteen, they run away together and manage to survive by depending on each other.

One day, Stella vanishes. From that point on the story is split into two, following Stella and Desiree separately. Stella has passed as white and married a successful white man. Desiree married and then left an abusive Black man whom she flees with her very dark skinned daughter and returns home.

The novel is an almost Shakespearean tale about identity, both racial and gender. It is not, as far as I am concerned, about whether or not the characters are likeable, but about what happens to individual identities as they live and grow in a world that disdains difference.

As these sisters and daughters and mothers long for each other through several decades, a majority of the characters do grow and change giving a hopeful aspect. Some do not, due to being either oblivious, hopelessly prejudiced or just plain evil. 

I was captivated on every page. Brit Bennett, I think, believes in love and family but is showing us how those aspects of life are also full of pain, separation and loss along with just enough redemption to keep life going.