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Summary and Reviews of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half

A Novel

by Brit Bennett
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (11):
  • Readers' Rating (7):
  • First Published:
  • Jun 2, 2020, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Feb 2022, 400 pages
  • Reviewed by BookBrowse Book Reviewed by:
    Kim Kovacs
  • Genres & Themes
  • Publication Information
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

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.

One

The morning one of the lost twins returned to Mallard, Lou LeBon ran to the diner to break the news, and even now, many years later, everyone remembers the shock of sweaty Lou pushing through the glass doors, chest heaving, neckline darkened with his own effort. The barely awake customers clamored around him, ten or so, although more would lie and say that they'd been there too, if only to pretend that this once, they'd witnessed something truly exciting. In that little farm town, nothing surprising ever happened, not since the Vignes twins had disappeared. But that morning in April 1968, on his way to work, Lou spotted Desiree Vignes walking along Partridge Road, carrying a small leather suitcase. She looked exactly the same as when she'd left at sixteen-still light, her skin the color of sand barely wet. Her hipless body reminding him of a branch caught in a strong breeze. She was hurrying, her head bent, and-Lou paused here, a bit of a showman-she was holding the hand of a girl...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Stella and Desiree Vignes grow up identical and, as children, inseparable. Later, they are not only separated, but lost to each other, completely out of contact. What series of events and experiences leads to this division and why? Was it inevitable, after their growing up so indistinct from each other?
  2. When did you notice cracks between the twins begin to form? Do you understand why Stella made the choice she did? What did Stella have to give up, in order to live a different kind of life? Was it necessary to leave Desiree behind? Do you think Stella ultimately regrets her choices? What about Desiree?
  3. Consider the various forces that shape the twins into the people they become, and the forces that later shape their respective daughters....
Please be aware that this discussion may contain spoilers!

See what our members are saying about this book in our Community Forum.

What audience would you recommend The Berry Pickers to? Is there another book or author you feel has a similar theme or style?
...-knit family, community and indigenous farm workers. Also, their ways of life and the struggles and prejudices toward Native people. I loved reading, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, The Council of Dolls by Susan Power. I also recommend Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann, and for a quick mystery read, Margaret Coel's books...
-Mary_Goldberg


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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The Vanishing Half is one of my favorite novels of the year; it’s entertaining, fast-moving, has great characters, and Bennett’s writing style is absolutely stellar from start to finish. Fans of novels such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, or The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd will almost certainly enjoy this one as well, as will those interested in reading about mother-daughter relationships. The book would also be an ideal choice for book groups...continued

Full Review (725 words)

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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).

Media Reviews

Elle
This is sure to be one of 2020's best and boldest…A tale of family, identity, race, history, and perception, Bennett's next masterpiece is a triumph of character-driven narrative.

Harper's Bazaar
Not to be missed.

Los Angeles Times
Bennett pours a small kitchen sink of contemporary issues: racial passing, colorism, domestic abuse, intersectional feminism, transsexuality, dementia, selling out, class politics and, sure, the plight of being a twin. It could be utterly disastrous in the wrong hands. But it isn’t. Instead, Bennett pulls it off brilliantly...Although Bennett’s essays and fiction undeniably have a social-justice agenda, she leaves any weighty parallels — between, for example, racial and gender determinism — to the reader. Her restraint is the novel’s great strength,

Washington Post
[A] fierce examination of contemporary passing and the price so many pay for a new identity...Bennett asks us to consider the meaning of authenticity when we are faced with racism, colorism, sexism and homophobia. What price do we pay to be ourselves? How many of us choose to escape what is expected of us? And what happens to the other side of the equation, the side we leave behind? The Vanishing Half answers all these questions in this exquisite story of love, survival and triumph.

New York Times
The novel fails to imagine meaningful story lines or compelling links between the young women and their mothers’ burdens. As a result, their sections struggle to find momentum and weight...Despite these shortcomings, The Vanishing Half is a brave foray into vast and difficult terrain. It is about racial identity, of course, and three generations of mother-daughter relationships. It is also about a particularly American existential conflict — the tension between personal freedom and responsibility to a community.

O, The Oprah Magazine
A page-turner about once-inseparable twin girls now living radically different lives.

Vogue
Here, in her sensitive, elegant prose, [Bennett] evokes both the strife of racism, and what it does to a person even if they can evade some of its elements.

Booklist (starred review)
Reflecting and refracting her story via the four related women—sisters, cousins, mothers, daughters—at its heart, and with an irresistible narrative voice, Bennett writes an intergenerational epic of race and reinvention, love and inheritance, divisions made and crossed, binding trauma, and the ever-present past.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Assured and magnetic...Kin '[find] each other's lives inscrutable' in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Impressive …This prodigious follow-up surpasses Bennett's formidable debut.

Reader Reviews

Cathryn Conroy

A Richly Imagined Story That Is a Brilliant Reflection on Race, Racism, and the Essence of Identity
Who are you…really? And can you ever escape your past to create a completely different future? When do lies become the truth? These are the central questions that gently guide the characters and plot of this engaging book by Brit Bennett. Desiree ...   Read More
Juliana

Finding oneself
I found Bennett’s The Vanishing Half to read like a classic. A solid, almost old-fashioned story of family and destiny-making away from and in the small towns and big cities of America, woven around the big theme of identity, racial identity, gender ...   Read More
Becky H

An Unsettling book
Unsettling is the only word I can use to describe this book. Can a person vanish? To themselves? To their family? Can men vanish from society? the world? Can a person vanish and still be physically present? Can a town vanish? Can a person make ...   Read More
Karen T

Riveting
Can’t put it down! It’s our book club’s choice this month. Almost finished reading it. Told through multiple perspectives across decades. The characters development was excellent and even though the main focus was on twin sisters and their daughters ...   Read More

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Beyond the Book



Twins

Side by side diagrams of identical and fraternal twins Brit Bennett's novel, The Vanishing Half, follows the lives of Stella and Desiree Vignes, identical twin girls born in Louisiana in 1938.

As you likely know, there are broadly two types of twins: fraternal and identical. Fraternal, or dizygotic, twins are formed when two separate eggs are fertilized by two separate spermatozoa, creating two distinct embryos with their own genetic profiles. They're basically just like any siblings, looking, sounding and acting differently from each other, and they can also be different genders; they just happen to have been conceived at the same time in the same uterus.

Identical twins, also known as monozygotic twins, occur when a single fertilized egg splits, forming two identical copies of itself....

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

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