Turning dreams into reality was not as easy as either of the twins thought it would be. It had been easy and exciting in the beginning. It became a story about family secrets and how life is stifled because of them. It is about the courage that it takes to make necessary, and sometimes unwelcome changes. Desiree and Stella, from the fictional southern community of Mallard, disappeared one night after a town event.They just ran away to New Orleans. Desiree convinced Stella to run, but it was Stella who never returned to stay. Cramped in a tiny basement apartment, not knowing anyone, they struggled to find jobs, their lives revolving in ways they never dreamed.
The Vanishing Half is about more than two teenagers running away from a community where they felt cramped and stifled. Brit Bennett has beautifully written a story about one of the complexities of being Negro. A sort of internal class system based on skin colour. * “In Mallard, nobody married dark.” Desiree did ‘marry dark’. Her only child, Jude, had extremely dark skin ~ the Mallard community called her ‘blueblack’. When she and her mother returned to Mallard, Jude was not treated well by her school mates because of the colour of her skin. Stella slipped into being white which, over time, became a lie that consumed her life. In her life of privilege, she hid her secret beginnings from her husband, Blake and their daughter, Kennedy. One of the experiences for Stella and Desiree as children was seeing their father brutally killed by white men. They each responded to this experience in different ways. For Desiree, it was merely a past. For Stella, it was a trauma that underlined her desire to disappear into whiteness.
Jude, Desiree’s shy and black skinned daughter and Kennedy, Stella’s spoiled, arrogant ‘white’ daughter met by accident. Jude, searching for her mother Desiree’s sister, had almost given up on every finding her. When she did, convincing Kennedy that they were cousins was her challenge.
Almost as an afterthought, one other secret crept into Jude’s life. It showed another way that people are compelled to change their selves and their image. Her boyfriend hid his gender from her. They were deeply in love. His gender change was never openly discussed, as most family secrets are never discussed. Jude and Reese loved each other without reservation regardless of society’s norm. Was this really an afterthought?
Another interesting character, Early Jones is a man who Desiree knew as a teen. Her mother did not like him because he was 'dark' and had a past. Drifting through his life, he was a man who could 'find' people for a price. He and Desiree met again when she returned to Mallard when Jude was a child. Their relationship was honest and real, but not conventional. Early supported Desiree from his various hotel rooms or the back seat of his car. When her mother, Adel Vignes, developed Azheimer's Disease, Early returned to live in Mallard to help with her care. Getting a steady job, he also chose to change his life.
I was quite impressed with this well written story. It did stall later in the book, but the story kept me reading. Did I like all the characters? For the most part, I did. Some of their behaviours I did not, but given their back stories, I understood them. A book to keep and to re-read.
“She hadn't realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”
~ Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half
*Chapter 1, Page 5
Title: The Vanishing Half
Author: Brit Bennett
Copyright: 2020
Publisher: Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Type: Novel
Format: Hard Cover
ISBN: 9780525536291
LLC: PS3602.E66444 (ebook)
ISBN: 9780593190197 (International edition)
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