The Vanishing Half
The Vanishing Half ~ Brit Bennett
Desiree and Stella Vignes are identical twin sisters from the fictional town of Mallard, Louisiana, a town inhabited by very light skinned black people. The sisters witness the lynching of their father in the 1940s, and their mother pulls them out of school in order to help support their household by becoming housekeepers for a local family, where Stella is assaulted. At the age of 16, the sisters run away.
In order to find a job, Stella starts passing for white, and eventually falls in love with a white man and moves away, leaving her heartbroken sister behind. Stella marries and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their daughter, Kennedy, neither of whom know anything about Stella’s family or past. Desiree moves to Washington, D.C., where she is in an abusive marriage, and eventually moves home to Mallard with her dark skinned daughter, Jude.
The story then goes on to Kennedy and Jude’s story lines, and how they converge when Jude sees Stella, the aunt she never knew she had. I really liked this book, and found it very satisfying. Highly recommended.
12 Comments
Margaret
I loved the first part of the book then thought it lost its way in the second part. I ended up dissatified with it because it meandered too much for me. An excellent discussion book in Book Club though!
J
I’ve had a couple of comments where people ask whether I think a book would be good for book club discussion, and I’ve not given it the proper thought. I’ve never been part of a book club other than Engie’s, and haven’t put in the work on my end to decide whether a book would be good for discussion, even if you didn’t love the book. Which is ridiculous, because Engie’s club has a lot of folks that didn’t LOVE the books or characters, but they were all in for the discussion. Thanks for finally nudging me toward understanding the difference between loving a book and it being good for discussion.
Margaret
Absolutely right! The best discussions we have are when some love/like the book and others don’t. There have been books I didn’t care for that I came to appreciate more after discussion–or the opposite. We often veer into comparisons with our own lives which make the messages of the book more personal. I’ve grown and learned so much by being in a Book Club!
NGS
We read this in my (IRL) book club and it was a really good discussion. I thought the book was too superficial and it would have had to be four times as long to really deal well with the issues it talked about, but it was a fantastic book club book. So many ways the discussion could go.
Maya
I LOVED this book…
There’s another kind of passing that’s described as well–that of a trans character. And the detail of how that character saved up for top surgery brings me to tears every time…
J
I loved that storyline as well Maya!
Nicole MacPherson
I read this in 2020, which was before I “rated” books on my spreadsheet. I remember liking it but I don’t remember much else!
J
That’s me with so many books…I remember very little once a bit of time has gone by!
Stephany
I really liked this book. It was such a fascinating topic.
Tobia | craftaliciousme
I did read it a couple of years ago but i didnt like it as much as you did or the many poeple who hyped it. Nit sure what it was to be honest.
J
Sometimes a book just doesn’t speak to us I guess. Sounds like this was one for you.
Ernie
I read this one! I read this one! I read this for book club. I liked it, but like another commenter, I liked the first half of the book more than the second half. The first half felt more genuine, and the second half seemed a bit far fetched at times. Still, I enjoyed it. Parts of it were so sad, that she severed contact with her family for all those years.