Book review: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett enjoyed a lot of success and hype when it was first published. I’ve had it on my to-read list ever since, yet I had somehow managed to avoid not only spoilers but any idea of the book’s setting or themes. I quite enjoyed coming to this novel completely fresh, though I doubt it would have marred my pleasure to know more.
In August 1954, identical twin teenage girls Stella and Desiree disappear from the small town of Mallard, Louisiana. In 1968 one sister returns. The story starts from Desiree’s return in 1968, expanding both back and forward from that point to fill in their childhood, the missing years and the future. It is thus a decades-long story but told as a mystery rather than a saga.
Though the core of the story is blood relatives who have split apart to lead very different lives, this novel concentrates more on chosen family. The twins’ mother Adele, widowed young, loves Early – a man who comes and goes from her home and her life, but always come back and is in his own way a loving stepfather to the girls. They never marry and, despite the time and location, this is accepted. Later, her granddaughter chooses a relationship with another man whose only real flaw is that they cannot get married.
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