This family drama explores identity, secrets, and forgiveness. The Vignes family was irreparably damaged by violence, loss and separation. As the twins embark on a new life, they must shed their past
Stella and her twin Desiree leave their small town without saying goodbye to family or friends. One eventually returns, running from an unhappy past. The other twin starts a new life "passing over". But Stella and Desiree aren't the only ones who have remade themselves, leaving behind an old identity. ( )

5 stars - this is a GREAT read. For me, this was an eye-opening look into the life of a Black person wanting to be white; (the books terms, black and white). I didn’t know the term “pass” or “pass over” was a term for when that happens - nor did I know that really is a desire of some very light-skinned people of color, or that they do it.

Ms. Bennett writes with amazing clarity, giving life to her characters; I lived them, I understood their plights, both the “white” and the “black” people in the story. She enlightened me with this quick-paced, beautiful story. I didn’t want it to end.

I would highly recommend this book. High praise for Brit Bennett and The Vanishing Half. ( )

The Vanishing Half is a tale of light-skinned, Black twin sisters, Desiree and Stella Vignes, who grew up in rural Mallard, Louisiana -- a village filled with light-skinned Black residents who appear to be as prejudiced against dark-skinned Black people as their white neighbors in surrounding towns. They "would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes." The story spans the 1940s to the 1990s, but it is set largely in the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, and the action moves back and forth between time periods to reveal the very different paths the sisters chose for their lives. In 1954, the sisters run away to New Orleans from their stultifying life, where their lives dramatically diverge.

We meet Desiree again fourteen years later when she flees an abusive marriage in Washington, D.C. for her childhood home with her eight-year-old daughter, Jude Winston, who is so dark that Ms. Bennett describes her as "blueblack". She becomes reacquainted with Early, with whom she had a brief romance before her mother ran him off -- "too dark" -- and who is now a bounty hunter who was hired by her husband to find her and their daughter. He eventually throws the husband off the trail and Desiree and Early carry on a mostly long-distance relationship as Jude grows up isolated and shunned by Blacks and whites alike. For years, Early looks for Stella at Desiree's behest, but never finds her.

Stella, on the other hand, disappears and Desiree feels as if she has been ripped in half. We do not encounter again until the late 1960s, when we learn Stella "passed" into the white world. She became involved with her white boss at the department store where she worked, a trust-fund, Yale-educated Bostonian and they eventually marry. She follows him to Philadelphia, Boston, then Los Angeles, where they raise their blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter Kennedy Sanders in an upper-class, white neighborhood. All the while, Stella lives in fear her secret will be revealed and her whole life will come apart. She is not an easy character to like. Perhaps it is her constant vigilance against being exposed that leaves her cold and bigoted. When the neighborhood homeowner's association learns that a Black family has put a bid on a house for sale, she is the most vocal about not wanting Blacks in her community; the family nevertheless moves in. When she discovers Kennedy playing with the newly arrived Black child, she runs across the street and grabs her daughter away “because we don’t play with niggers,” which Kennedy eventually repeats.

Eventually, Jude and Kennedy meet. Jude is attending UCLA on an athletic scholarship and living with a transsexual man, Reese, who has also escaped a stultifying life in Texas where he was raised as Therese. Reese's best friend, Barry, who becomes Bianca on weekends, is in theater. Barry is in a play in a small community theater where the obnoxious Kennedy is cast as the lead, and that is how Jude begins unpeeling Stella's story. Unfortunately, the least formed character was Kennedy; she was a one-dimensional, spoiled rich girl.

While the story remains interesting throughout, the characters are well-drawn, and Ms. Bennett's observations are rich, the coincidences in the story are a little too fantastic and I found the interaction between Jude and Kennedy fell flat. ( )

An interesting story of the lives of twin girls who grew up in a town of black people who could pass for white. It follows their lives after they run away from this town and begin new lives that will alter their beliefs in differing ways. A good read. Kirkus: Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish.The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets�first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the ?fidgety twin,? and Stella, ?a smart, careful girl,? make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. The gossips are agog: ?In Mallard, nobody married dark....Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.? Desiree's decision seals Jude?s misery in this ?colorstruck? place and propels a new generation of flight: Jude escapes on a track scholarship to UCLA. Tending bar as a side job in Beverly Hills, she catches a glimpse of her mother?s doppelg?nger. Stella, ensconced in White society, is shedding her fur coat. Jude, so Black that strangers routinely stare, is unrecognizable to her aunt. All this is expertly paced, unfurling before the book is half finished; a reader can guess what is coming. Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. The scene in which Stella adopts her White persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion. It calls up Toni Morrison?s The Bluest Eye, the book's 50-year-old antecedent. Bennett's novel plays with its characters' nagging feelings of being incomplete¥for the twins without each other; for Jude?s boyfriend, Reese, who is trans and seeks surgery; for their friend Barry, who performs in drag as Bianca. Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp. In the second half, Jude spars with her cousin Kennedy, Stella's daughter, a spoiled actress.Kin ?[find] each other?s lives inscrutable? in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.

I loved the way this book explored so many facets of identity -- being a twin, racial categories, colorism, community belonging, passing, class, being transgender, drag queens, acting on stage and screen, Alzheimer's disease. Even fingerprints are connected to the question of identity in this story. I love it when so many elements of the story coalesce around a theme so this was an intellectually satisfying and rich book.

I was engaged in the story the whole way, but the plot didn't quite do it for me in the end. It felt like the story just kind of faded out. This is often how literary fiction ends, so it's not a big criticism, but I was hoping for an ending with more of a punch and I didn't get it. It looks like this book will be made into a movie, which I will definitely watch to see if they tack on a more Hollywood ending. ( )