The Vanishing Half: Sunday Times Bestseller Paperback – 9 June 2020
Review
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
As thought-provoking as it is engrossing ― Oprah magazine
Brit Bennett has learned a lot from Toni Morrison - the use of uncanny rural communities in the South/Midwest; twins/doppelgängers to explore the extreme edges of the American Dream; whip-smart dialogue - but her exquisite slowness and patience of tone are unique. A wonderful, cosseting read ― Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk
The Vanishing Half is an utterly mesmerising novel. It seduces with its literary flair, surprises with its breath-taking plot twists, delights with its psychological insights, and challenges us to consider the corrupting consequences of racism on different communities and individual lives. I absolutely loved this book ― Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize
A novel of immense, shining, powerful intelligence ― Deborah Levy
The Vanishing Half should mark the induction of Brit Bennett into the small group of likely successors to Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen. I read it torn between competing urges: I wanted to greedily turn the pages, yet I also wanted to savour every word, lingering as long as I could with the delicious feeling of being sunk so deep into the story that every time I set the book aside it felt like coming up for air. Compelling, compassionate and astonishingly good ― Sara Collins
A potent, generous, and masterful novel. Bennett is a humane and supple story-teller we are lucky to have ― Olivia Sudjic
Review
Ferociously moving . . . a lush book, a book of so many secrets, betrayal . . . I found myself reading not to find out what happens to the characters, but to find out who they are - New York Times Book Review on The Mothers
[A] compelling debut - New Yorker on The Mothers
Luminous . . . engrossing and poignant, this is one not to miss - People on The Mothers
With echoes of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Mothers is not your typical coming-of-age novel: It begins with Nadia's abortion, an experience often absent from our culture's stories, and goes on to look at how women step in to nurture - and sometimes betray - one another - Vogue on The Mothers
A refreshingly fast-paced story of young love, race, and religious hypocrisy - Vanity Fair on The Mothers
A beautifully written, sad and lingering book - Guardian on The Mothers
Book Description
Dialogue's super lead for 2020. From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Mothers, a powerful new novel about the parallel lives of estranged twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds - one black and one white.
From the Publisher
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation's 2016 5 Under 35 honorees.
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. She is one of the National Book Foundation's 2016 5 Under 35 honorees.
- Publisher : Dialogue Books; 1st edition (9 June 2020)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0349701458
- ISBN-13 : 978-0349701455
- Dimensions : 15.2 x 3 x 23.2 cm