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The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett

From Shelf: Recommended Top Reads

Dialogue's super lead for 2020. From the author of the New York Times bestseller The Mothers, a powerful new novel about the parallel lives of estranged twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds - one black and one white.

Sunday Times bestseller

Longlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

Longlisted for the Orwell Prize

Longlisted for the National Book Award

'The Vanishing Half is an utterly mesmerising novel. It seduces with its literary flair, surprises with its breath-taking plot twists, delights with its psychological insights, and challenges us to consider the corrupting consequences of racism on different communities and individual lives. I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, 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 white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines 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 riveting, 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 decisions, 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.

Praise for Brit Bennett:

'A writer to watch' Washington Post

'Bennett allows her characters to follow their worst impulses, and she handles provocative issues with intelligence, empathy and dark humour' New York Times

'A beautifully written, sad and lingering book' Guardian on The Mothers

Format:
Hardback
Pages:
352
Publisher:
Dialogue
ISBN:
9780349701462
Published Date:
11/6/2020
Dimensions:
238mm x 162mm x 36mm
Weight:
588g
Category:
Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Currently unavailable to Buy Local

RRP: £14.99

Format: Hardback

ISBN: 9780349701462

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Shelves containing this book

The 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist
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The 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist
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