eliotlovell reviewed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Great book
5 stars
Complex, layered, meaningful and above all really enjoyable to read.
Hardcover, 343 pages
English language
Published by Riverhead Books.
The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
4 stars
(25 reviews)
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 …
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.
ish-i-ness reviewed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Review of 'The Vanishing Half' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Good stuff to say: If you’ve never read a book about African Americans, this is a good way to learn some stuff. It would make for a good book club book.
What I really want to say: Well that was exactly what I thought it was going to be. I probably didn’t even need to read it. That’s how close I was about what to expect from this book. It’s not bad. It’s perfectly competent. I just can’t shake this feeling that I read the same book just a few years ago.... so I’m lowering the rating out of sheer boredom.
Stephen reviewed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Review of 'The Vanishing Half' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book took me a while to get into , but about halfway through I became really engaged with the story.
jayvall reviewed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Review of 'The Vanishing Half' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I could have read another 500 pages of this. Nothing really happens but I still found it infinitely readable. My only two complaints is 1) Bennett doesn't really spend any time describing what anyone looks like. She gave one or two defining features for a few characters but for a lot of people I had no idea what they looked like, and for a book so focused on looks and the ability to pass, you'd think we'd want to know what the twins looked like beyond "light". My second complaint, and this is minor, but it was hard to tell what year the story was set in. The story jumped around a lot and was broken up into sections with broad years attached to them, but within the sections there was a lot of time jumping which made it difficult to know when things were happening. It's not the biggest …
I could have read another 500 pages of this. Nothing really happens but I still found it infinitely readable. My only two complaints is 1) Bennett doesn't really spend any time describing what anyone looks like. She gave one or two defining features for a few characters but for a lot of people I had no idea what they looked like, and for a book so focused on looks and the ability to pass, you'd think we'd want to know what the twins looked like beyond "light". My second complaint, and this is minor, but it was hard to tell what year the story was set in. The story jumped around a lot and was broken up into sections with broad years attached to them, but within the sections there was a lot of time jumping which made it difficult to know when things were happening. It's not the biggest deal but something I struggled with.
GG reviewed The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Review of 'The Vanishing Half' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
4.5 stars. We all contain multitudes, and when we’re forced to pigeonhole ourselves into limited identities proscribed by society, we suffer a real loss: The vanishing half that disappears. That’s the message of this book, but it’s woven into a family drama that’s compelling on its own, full of fascinating, three-dimensional characters. Too often a novel that tries to make a point puts the plot in service of that point, to the detriment of the plot — but that’s not the case here. I couldn’t put it down, wanting to see what happened to the characters. An excellent read, entertaining, but with depth.
Subjects
- Fiction
- Historical fiction
- Racism
- Colorism
- Jim Crow era
- Twins
- Black
- African American