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Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half: from the New York Times bestselling author of The Mothers Hardcover

by BRIT BENNETT (Author)

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Language

English
Publisher

LITTLE BROWN BOOK GROUP
Dimensions

16.2 x 3.6 x 23.8 cm
ISBN-10

0349701466
ISBN-13

978-0349701462
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Product details

Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0349701466
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0349701462
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 580 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.2 x 3.6 x 23.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #1,047,950 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
91,233 ratings

About the author

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Brit Bennett

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Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and 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 essays are featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.

Customer reviews

5 star		50%
4 star		34%
3 star		12%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Canada

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Reviewed in Canada on January 19, 2021

Verified Purchase

My lack of enthusiasm for this popular, well-loved book saddens me. I have to be honest and admit I was disappointed, especially because it was one of the most hyped and highly praised novels of 2020. The premise was compelling, and its summary made it a book that I was anxious to read. A TV production is in the works, and perhaps it will appeal to me more. I purchased the Kindle edition and bought the hardcover version for a Xmas gift for a relative who mentioned she wanted to read it.

My misgivings should not deter prospective readers, as many rated it very highly. The book attempted to explore important issues such as; identity (both racial and gender-related), economic opportunities, colorism based on the lightness of skin, domestic abuse, bigotry, racial violence, and broken family ties. I failed to feel any emotional connection with the characters and wanted to know them better. They remained flat and distant on the pages. There were gaps where the twins' actions and motivation went unexplained. The focus on identity through changing ones' racial heritage and gender might have been addressed in a more informative and intriguing manner.

I found the plot slow-paced and struggled with the non-linear storyline. The back and forth between the timelines and characters became distracting for me. I apologize for my reaction. Obviously, the book was not for me, but I know many will read it with enjoyment.

21 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Disappointing

Reviewed in Canada on December 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

I read it because it is our book club book for this month. I would never have finished it, if it not for the book club. I found it easy to put down which for me is not a good book. I was surprised to see that even in the black population, there is a pecking order if you like about color. It was certainly a very sad story about a lost identity in order to better yourself as well as the loss of family and how that can impact future generations.

12 people found this helpful

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Debbie @storiesandstacks

Such a fabulous and compelling story and it will be one of my favourites this year

Reviewed in Canada on July 23, 2020

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The Vignes twin sisters grew up in a small southern black community but at the age of sixteen they run away. They both try to escape their pasts in different directions. Ten years later, one returns home, with her daughter. The other light skinned sister secretly passes for white and is living with her affluent husband and daughter. Years later in a twist of fate, their daughter's storylines finally intersect and secrets are revealed. Bennett weaves such a compelling story, while covering some important topics with care. I also loved the supporting characters and their stories and found myself cheering them on.

After I finished this book I went to read more about the author and what I loved was the Vanity Fair interview I found as. Bennett was quoted there as saying that 'she hopes the story gives the reader a sense of joy. Not only is it about Black pain, but also about Black love and how people get free and find liberation in very difficult circumstances.' For me personally, I found the book really did bring me joy in reading it and I found that sense of hope in my reading of it.

12 people found this helpful

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Leslie

The Second Book I have devoured in Three Days.

Reviewed in Canada on March 3, 2021

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I was watching "The Social" a few weeks ago when they announced "The Vanishing Half" was Their Book of the Month for March. So I thought "Okay", looked it up on Amazon and read the preview and I was HOOKED.
So I ordered it. When I opened it and started reading it I was so happy I ordered it.
It is beautifully told, flows smoothly throughout the book. It also raises a lot of issues We as a Society face today.
I HIGHLY, highly, highly recommend this book
It ties with "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle as one of My Favourite books of the last year or so.
Brit Bennet is an awesome writer, and story teller.
This is a MUST buy. Beyond that, I'm not saying any more as it will give things away.

6 people found this helpful

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Dave

I nave read much better.

Reviewed in Canada on January 31, 2021

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This book felt empty, devoid of normal humanity. It speaks to a new “woke” generation, and perhaps satisfies them.

Grisham does a far better job of telling a story in a way that allows an escape from the strains of life, arouses the best sentiments, informs but does not preach, and leaves the reader happy for the experience.

Not so here. I could read only so much at a time. And I had to put it away to carry on with something more fulfilling. It truly was an effort to finish it.

It might, perhaps, work as a script for a soap opera.

6 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

I didn’t finish the book but you might want to know....

Reviewed in Canada on May 13, 2021

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Note, this is somewhat unfair of me to even write a review but it seams relevant. Bought it for book club. Was difficult to get started at all. Fell behind rather quickly along with several others. Those who did read it seemed to like it at first but as time went on I was told to “not even bother” trying to catch up as the story changed over and over and eventually at the end there was no real conclusion. Leaving the people who made it that far pretty sad as they only finished it hoping for some kind of a wrap up or bringing together of the multiple stories kinda thrown together. Give it a try. I didn’t get very far though and have been encouraged to not even bother.

4 people found this helpful

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Laraine

4 1/2 stars. A very interesting and thoughtful book.

Reviewed in Canada on January 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

4 1/2 star. I really enjoyed this book. In Mallard, Louisiana, twin girls live in the town established for light black people. Stella and Desiree Vignes see their father lynched by white men. When they are teens, they disappear from Mallard and reappear in New Orleans. One decides to live her life as a white woman and lives a very different life than her twin, who marries a black man who brutalizes her and she flees with her black daughter. Years later, the two young cousins meet and discover the long kept family secrets. A very interesting and thoughtful book.

2 people found this helpful

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Lexie Sallows

Odd

Reviewed in Canada on February 23, 2021

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This book was unlike anything I typically read. Somehow even though the story was so odd, I was still hooked to find out more! The story began hard to follow near the very end, and I did not enjoy the ending besides the fact it was a peaceful moment. I am grateful to of read this book during Black History Month, as it has a great insight into a lot of black history given the time frame it was written in. I don’t know what category this book would be put under, but it definitely had a mystery vibe to it with wanting to find out more and more. Good character development.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

A beautiful, brilliantly written novel. An absolute MUST-read, right now.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

I moved work meetings around to read this book, I truly could not put it down.

Every great novel should force you out of your comfort zone, introduce you to new worlds and make you pause to think and assess. The Vanishing Half manages this, it feels, with ease. Brit Bennett achieved this with The Mothers too (which I also loved and is a MUST-read), but here the cast, the setting and the timeline are even more expansive. Thus the skill on display, even more impressive.

This is a novel that weaves the themes of history, memory and identity. It encourages us to put aside simplified notions of racial dynamics, and as a mixed-race woman, I found myself deeply interrogating my own thoughts, beliefs and experiences. This is not, though, only a novel about race and it would be disingenuous to believe so. This is a journey through family ties, belonging and loss; of individuals, couples, communities. Seamlessly bringing together these myriad threads is the sign of a masterful writer.

Brit writes with unpretentious flair, in a way that envelopes you softly, almost as though you're hearing your mum telling you the story as her mum told it to her. No word is wasted, no sentence is filler, no dialogue is superfluous. Everything serves its purpose exquisitely and is imbibed with feeling.

This novel spans the full emotional spectrum, it brought me moments of sadness, anger, and tender delight, all of which I am truly grateful for. I needed this novel right now - and I believe many of us do. Please, do not hesitate to purchase this book.

84 people found this helpful

edbusa

The story was not centered on the Twin sisters!!!

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

This is clearly a case off false advertising. I expected the book to convey a story on the dynamics identical twins raised in the racist south. THIS WAS NOT THE CORE OF THE BOOK. Instead it focused on the dynamics of the LGBTQ community. I have absolutely no interest in such matters. Thoroughly disappointed.

1,015 people found this helpful

Ralph Blumenau

Problems of racial and gender identity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

The first three quarters of the book are excellent. They tell of the lives of twin sisters, Desiree and Stella, who were born in the fictional Louisiana town of Mallard, where the population of African-Americans were all light-skinned and looked down on dark skinned people.

This had not prevented whites from a neighbouring town from lynching their father for an imagined racial transgression.

In 1964 Desiree and Stella ran way to St Louis. But they soon went their separate ways. Stella, traumatized by having seen her father lynched, had decided to pass as white. She had taken a job in St Louis. Her employer, a wealthy white banker called Blake Sanders had taken a liking to her, and she to him; and when he was moved to Boston and asked her to go with him, she had agreed, and had simply walked out on Desiree without telling her where she had gone. There she married him and bore him a white daughter, Kennedy. Neither Blake nor Kennedy knew that she was not white. Later they moved to Los Angeles.

For years Stella had no contact with Desiree. She was always terrified that she would be found out, and avoided any contact with black people. The exception was her friendship for a while with Loretta Walker, a black woman who lived in the house opposite hers; but this ended when Kennedy, playing with Loretta’s daughter Cindy, made a racist comment to Cindy.

Desiree had gone to Washington D.C, and married a black man, Sam Winston, and bore him a black daughter, Jude. But Sam was violent towards Desiree, and she and Jude left him and returned to Mallard in 1968.
In 1982 Jude was living in Los Angeles with Reese Carter, a transgender man with whom, sharing his bed, she has an affaire of sorts, and with Barry, who performs as a drag queen twice a month. Reese and Barry, like Stella, were passing for something they were not.

One day, Jude thought she had seen Stella, the lookalike of her mother; and she also met Kennedy.
Kennedy had become a rebel, had dropped out school, and against her mother’s wishes, had taken up acting in a crummy play in a crummy theatre. Jude took a job as a dogsbody at the theatre in order to see more of her cousin and in the hope of meeting Stella. On the last night of the show she did meet Stella, and introduced herself to her as Desiree’s daughter. Stella froze, then walked away. Angrily, Jude told Kennedy that their mothers were twins, and that Stella had been lying to Kennedy all her life.

The secret was out: Stella knew she had been rumbled, and Kennedy knew the truth.

I found the remaining quarter of the book, dealing in part with the consequences of this situation, very confusing. Hence only three stars, when so much of the book deserves five.

41 people found this helpful

Daniel S

The Road Not Taken

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book is about choices and circumstance. It tells the story of twin girls growing up in the segregated South. They live in a town that is colorstruck inhabited by light skinned black people. Both sisters, in their own way, rebel against the strictures of the town They run away as teenagers and wind up rebelling in very different fashions. One sister marries an extremely dark skinned man and has a dark skinned daughter. The other sister passes for white and lives a privileged life. Their stories...and the backstories of their forebears is told over a span of almost forty years, beginning in the 1950s. The novel has an arresting narrative and focuses on the choices people make, the secrets they hold and the consequences that unfold from this dynamic.

750 people found this helpful

J. Baker

Disappointing. Weak characters. Unanswered plot lines

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

The premise of the story about the twins lives got lost in many pages of LGBTQ trans issues. It was like there was not enough going on with the sisters lives, the author felt it necessary to throw this red herring into the story. And I don’t say plot because it was not part of the plot. I was very intrigued about the lives of the sisters, but I got no satisfaction of what made them what they were. They just moved from one day to the next like they could not take charge of their lives. They each suffered a malaise that was similarly experienced but the author was too lazy to explore it. Ending was unsatisfying and abrupt.

674 people found this helpful

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