The Vanishing Half
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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett got a lot of hype (The New York Times Book Review listed it on their top ten books of 2020), but I don’t see it. LyndsaysLitReviews says nah. It wasn’t a bad book, but I also wouldn’t recommend it.
The plot, briefly: Twin sisters grow up in Mallard, a fictional, experimental town that only allows light-skinned black populants. Once they’re older, one sister chooses to identify as black while the other chooses to identify as white. There are secrets, deception, identity crises, and regret.
Bennett is clearly a good writer and she develops her main characters well, although I still feel like some insight is lacking. After 300+ pages, the reasoning behind some character’s choices isn’t fully fleshed out, and some people remain mysterious. Of course, this is a perfectly fine trope in literature, but here, in a book about searching for answers, I think the reader should have a better hold on the search process.
My biggest complaint is that it’s anticlimactic. The story seems to be heading towards a confrontation, but when it occurs, it’s watered down and quickly passed over. Doing so may more accurately reflect real life, but it made for a more boring book. The novel seemed caught in the middle of wanting to be character-focused and plot-driven, with the final product ending up somewhere lost in between.
Maybe my lizard brain has taken a hit in 2020, but lately, my reading preferences fall into two categories: does it teach me something or does it entertain me? Ideally, it does both! The Vanishing Half taught me a bit-- how someone’s expectations about racial perceptions can change the way they act and exist in the world. Unfortunately, it did little to entertain me. Overall, The Vanishing Half receives 2 out of 5 flames.
