Spanning the 1950s to the 1990s and from the Deep South to California, Bennett’s stunning novel follows the journeys of two estranged twin sisters leading very different lives – to the extent of adopting different racial identities.
Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for May 2021
Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2021
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2020
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year 2021
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.
Publisher: Dialogue
ISBN: 9780349701479
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 300 g
Dimensions: 198 x 126 x 28 mm
Bennett's gorgeously written second novel, an ambitious meditation on race and identity, considers the divergent fates of twin sisters, born in the Jim Crow South, after one decides to pass for white. Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter - New York Times
Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter. . . there is such depth, possibility and dramatic propulsion . . a brave foray into vast and difficult terrain. . . .The novel raises thorny questions about the cost of blackness. The answers are complicated - New York Times Book Review
Stunning . . . Bennett pulls it off brilliantly . . . Few novels manage to remain interesting from start to finish, even - maybe especially - the brilliant ones. But . . . Bennett locks readers in and never lets them go - Los Angeles Times
Deeply compelling . . . brilliantly creates a network of characters - singular and vivid . . . There are moments . . . that stun with quiet power . . . The Vanishing Half more than succeeds as a beautifully imagined story about an American family - USA Today
I found this story to be both moving and ambitious. We will be introduced to identical twins, Desiree and Stella. When they turn sixteen everything will change. One will live as a black woman and the other as white.... More
The Vanishing Half is a tantalising slow-burner of a novel, an intelligent exploration of race, class and identity.
The opening premise is a little flimsy, and it is only when the setting moves beyond the...
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Two twins are born into the same set of circumstances, yet both attempt to escape them in very different ways.
Bennett winds us through a skilfully created plot as both are left questioning their own choices. Yet a...
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