Bennett, Brit "The Vanishing Half" - 2020

Bennett, Brit "The Vanishing Half" - 2020 

"You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood …"

I wasn't too sure about this book when I first saw it. It was a present by one of my sons and they usually know what I would like. This one won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021 (and several other book prizes), and they are usually quite good. But the cover. Too pink, too "sweet" for my usual liking. And then the mentioned hymns of praise by authors whose books I haven't enjoyed much. Not a good outlook.

And the beginning was a little like that. Too many stereotypes. But the story keeps growing until, in the end, we get a pretty decent book about the life or women, the problems with racism, bringing up children, etc.

Is this going to be my favourite book of the year or even the month. No.

Will I read another book by the author? Probably also not. There are far better authors around. I saw her compared to Toni Morrison. In my opinion, the only things they have in common is that they are women, their skin colour and they published books.

From the back cover:

"Stella and Desiree are identical twins, growing up together in a small, Southern black community. Until, at age sixteen, they run away…

Years later, everything about their lives is different: their families, communities and racial identities. One sister lives with her black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her husband knows nothing of her past. Still, separated by many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen in the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?"