I’d heard and read a lot about Brit Bennett’s debut novel ‘The Mothers’, a story about the consequences of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. Unfortunately, our local bookstores could never get the book. So I settled for her second novel published four years after The Mothers, ‘The Vanishing Half’, when I found it at Pilgrims Book House in Jhamsikhel. 

Now, The Mothers was a smashing success. Often when there’s that pressure to come out with another equally good work, writers don’t deliver. But if The Mothers is even as half as good as The Vanishing Half, it’s going to be a phenomenal read: Bennett’s second novel is filled with intrigue, drama, and a rich, detailed setting that puts you, the reader, smack in the middle of all that is happening. 

It’s a story about twin sisters Desiree and Stella Vignes who are born and live in Mallard, a fictional town in Louisiana, where the residents are mostly light-skinned blacks. Nobody marries dark in this town and over time the population becomes lighter and lighter, like ‘a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream’. But being lighter than the average blacks doesn’t protect them in an era when prejudices and racism run deep. 

The twin’s father is killed by a gang of white men and their mother works as a cleaner at a rich white lady’s house. Desiree and Stella know that if they continue to stay in Mallard, they won’t ever be safe or free despite their light skin tone and wavy locks. So they run away to New Orleans but after a year Stella leaves Desiree and the two end up leading entirely different lives: Stella passes off for white and Desiree marries the darkest man she can find. 

A decade later, the twin’s teenage children, dark-skinned Jude and blonde Kennedy, meet at a cocktail party. Initially they don’t know they are cousins but they soon find out that their mothers are sisters and how their lives have been shaped by the lies they had nothing to do with, their fates sealed by their mother’s decisions. Largely a story about racism and identity, The Vanishing Half also explores the fragility of relationships and the constant effort you need to put in to build the life you always dreamt of. 

Bennett seems to have a natural flair for writing and the story doesn’t drag on despite feeling a tad melodramatic at times. The Vanishing Half is a book of tremendous wisdom, forcing you to confront your hidden biases and misgivings about race, class, gender, and other societal constructs.

Three and half stars

Fiction

The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett 

Published: 2020

Publisher: Dialogue Books

Pages: 366, Paperback