The Vanishing Half / The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

Paperback

Published January 1, 2020

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. She is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and her debut novel The Mothers was a New York Times bestseller. Her second novel The Vanishing Half was an instant #1 New York Times bestseller. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.

Reviews

[Dennis McClure]

The Vanishing Half. The story is based on social phenomena that most of us know little about. African Americans choosing to pass as white, transsexuals…. It is intricate and can be confusing.

But it is told very well. You find yourself inside the heads of the characters as they negotiate complex feelings and situations.


I definitely recommend it.

[Rose Rush]

This book had potential but didn’t live up to it. The author added ancillary items like a transgender relationship that seemed added only to be “woke”. The idea of how the daughters meet is pretty far fetched. And the ending is flat.

[Deborah]

The Vanishing is a highly rated book about race and social order. It was easy to read and a typical novel, but nothing extraordinary.

[Kathy]

A tale of improbable coincidences, which for me was redeemed by the well drawn characters and the treatment of a dilemma that many black people have struggled with over the generations. Twin sisters Desiree and Stella are born into a Louisiana town populated by mostly light-skinned black folks. Close in childhood, their lives diverge when Stella estranges herself from that community and her family, to "become" white with a white husband and a blonde daughter who have no idea about her background. Desiree marries a man with very dark skin and has a daughter whose color is just as dark as her father's. Stella's secret poisons her relationship with her daughter, while Desiree is left to care for their aging mother and her own sense of being abandoned by her sister. How the two younger women discover their ancestry and forge a problematic relationship requires the reader to suspend disbelief in order to understand how Americans, black and white, are so hung up on skin color.

[Wendy Taylor]

I was intrigued by this book and was quickly drawn in once I began reading it. I had heard and read other reviews and was concerned that I might be disappointed but that wasn't the case. It's the story of twins who choose very different lives. It's a study of human behaviour, of loss, of mobility, of opportunity, of settling and of family ties. Above all, The Vanishing Half makes you think ... What if? It gives you the chance to step inside another person's skin and to wonder what it would be like, to make a decision and live by it, and then to have to reassess.

[Magdalene Nyahura]

The Mothers - I struggled with the theme of betrayal and infidelity especially as it involved one of the more innocent characters. The fact that the main protagonist also never got her 'happy ending' in my opinion was a bummer. Brit Bennett's however will always be a fave author as she gave us The vanishing half.

[Linda]

I don't know which I liked better!

[Kathy Foley]

I just read Vanishing Half. Not sure how I feel about this book. It would be a good book for a group discussion.

[Roxanne James]

3 1/2 stars

[Mary]

twins who leave their home town - one goes on to live her whole life as a white woman, the other returns to the home town - then their daughters meet

[FionaHamer]

My choice.

[Gillian Mcintosh]

Gave up on this one, particularly after the other reviews. Not gripping in an6 way.

[Kitty Morse]

Very interesting and well written. An eye opening history of race relations in America.