The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Do not let the bright colors of the book cover, release date, or size of this book fool you into thinking this is a cozy beach read. Even after reading the back fold, one could be drawn into thinking this might still pass as a light read for those long summer days. This is not the case. What is held between the covers is a complex, non-linear story spanning multiple decades and characters and bringing up a plethora of ideas, some very prescient to the current time.
Even with the statement above the pop-sugar cover might still lull some readers into the assumption this will be a straight forward story told through two characters, following traditional story structure, and ending with a climax and resolution to tie everything into a nice neat bow. Again, this is not the case. The book, for the low page count, packs in more punch than books twice its length in terms of the complex questions it raises about society, race, gender, identity, etc.
Those still convinced they will get a traditional plot and character arc will find the narrative jarring when it hops from time periods and characters exploring ever more complicated issues without stopping a lot of the time to spoon-feed the audience answers to these questions. The narrative will answer what happened to a character or how events unfolded, but the deeper whys are left to individual interpretations.
As is often the case in life we may take actions or make decisions without fully understanding ourselves why we are doing these things. The characters in The Vanishing Half often are not fully aware of the underlying current of society and their own bias nudging them toward choices. These incidents are multiplied by the consequences of parental choices playing out in children’s lives in several generations of a family.
As one who often wants to analyze “why” an author is doing something or what events or triggers are causing a character to grow or change, the unfolding of this book often clouded these reveals. And while the characters do change in this book “some very literally” the reader has to intuit for themselves the reasons why. In this way, The Vanishing Half is a compelling read, though some readers will have to put aside their preconceived notions and accept how often in life things are not wrapped up and settled by the time the screen fades to black. This is not an afterschool special about race where the characters experience one event and then find a concise way of solving it. The characters are complex, as is life, and how much can a single person ever know about another individual and what they are truly thinking/feeling? We can only look at their actions and how they approach the world to give insight into their mental state.
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