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The Vanishing Half is a 2020 novel by Brit Bennett. It is her second novel and was published by Riverhead Books. It debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list. As of September 6, 2020, the novel had spent 12 weeks on the list. HBO acquired the rights to develop a limited series with Bennett as executive producer.
The story of identical twin sisters who grew up in a small, southern black community. These two inseparable Vignes sisters live two different lives after running away at the age of sixteen. It's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it is everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. One lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly pass for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fate of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughter's storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the deep south to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a compulsive, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decision, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
At the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative 'Rave' rating with only one 'mixed' review.
Kirkus Reviews wrote, "The scene in which Stella adopts her white persona is a tour de force of doubling and confusion."
The New York Times wrote, "Bennett balances the literary demands of dynamic characterization with the historical and social realities of her subject matter."
The novel has been shortlisted many times for various awards:
- In 2020, National Book Award for Fiction
- In 2020, Prix Médicis étranger
- In 2021, Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Adaptation
Within a month of publication, it was reported that HBO had acquired the rights for "low seven-figures" to develop a limited series with Brit Bennett as executive producer.
About the Author
Brit Bennett is an American writer raised in Los Angeles, Southern California, and received an undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University. She later attended the University of Michigan for her M.F.A. She also studied at Oxford University. While at Michigan she has won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She has since published other nonfiction essays, including a history of black dolls called "Addy Walker, American Girl" for the Paris Review.
Her debut novel The Mother (2016) was a New York Times best-seller and been a finalist for the NBCC John Leonard Prize for the best first book, The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honorees. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.
Her second novel, The Vanishing Half (2020), was also a New York Times best-seller and chosen for Good Morning America Book Club selection.
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| Brit Bennett PC: Wiki |
Rating: 4.4/5
Author: Brit Bennett
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publishing Date: June 2, 2020
Edition Language: English
Genre: Historical Fiction, Family Saga, Mystery
ISBN-10: 0525536299
ISBN-13: 978-0525536291
Pages: 352 (Hardcover)
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