Title: The Vanishing Half
Author: Brit Bennett
Narrator: Shayna Small
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
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Wow. This was such a good book, and I can’t believe I almost gave up on it. I really enjoyed the narration and the narrator’s accent that really paints the picture of the book and setting for you.
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Full disclosure, historical fiction is not my favorite genre, and books set earlier than the 2000’s are very hard for me to get into. There have been few exceptions, where I got swept in from the first few pages. This book was not one of them. The first couple of hours just dragged on and I felt like I was going to give up on it. I kept going and decided to see the book through, and it turned out to be worth it. By part 3, the book picked up pace.
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There’s so much to love and enjoy in this book, especially the characters and their backstories. The story is told in the most non-linear timelines. The author kept shuffling among the past, future, and present. This helped build and develop a lot of characters and discuss themes in depth. There were very unique and well written characters in this book, all with their issues and struggles. There was just one character we never learnt much about even though he was very prominent in the book.
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The book dealt with many issues including but not limited to colorism, racism, social stratification, racial identity,
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I ended up loving the book very much, even though I wasn’t really into it in the beginning. I highly recommend it to everyone!
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Blurb
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.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 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’ 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.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
Oyinda Loves Books 