Reviews with content warning for Murder - Moja znikająca połowa

I read THE VANISHING HALF with my virtual book club, and we had an especially thoughtful, moving discussion about it. This novel explores internalized racism, beauty standards, colorism, and passing. But Bennett also reaches into the complexity of autonomy and independence vs. familial ties and obligations. Sometimes, the path that feels right for one person can deeply hurt others. How do we navigate that? What is the "right" choice? And what influences the decisions we make for our own lives?

There's a trans man side character and...his first appearance included a few instances of deadnaming. Cis authors, you've got to stop doing this—if you'd been listening at all, you'd know this was established *years* ago. Other than that, the rep was quite good and felt accurate for the time period. (I'd like to see what trans men who've read and reviewed the book have to say.) Best of all, he wasn't a tragic character! So that was wonderful.

This story brought up some big feelings re: my own complicated family, about being/not being seen or understood. The ending was especially moving and tears were shed. Bennett's previous novel, THE MOTHERS, has been sitting unread on my bookshelf for a couple of years, but now that I've experienced her writing, I'm hoping to get to that book soon.

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mollyc_29_2's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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bethsbookshelf's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Time to review THE BEST PIECE OF FICTION I'VE READ THIS YEAR!

Wow - I loved, loved, loved this book.

Things I loved:

🪴 The writing!! The first thing that pulled me in was the writing. From the first page, I was hooked. From the first chapter, I was emotionally invested. As they say, the characters leaped off the page, and I felt like I was really living their lives with them. The writing is simple, yet rich, and has some stunning and beautiful details. I underlined so many quotes. For instance, "Now, this was comfort - a languid morning spent floating across a swimming pool, a two-story house with cabinets always filled with food, a chestful of toys for her daughter, a bookshelf that held an entire encyclopedia set. This was comfort, no longer wanting anything."
🪴 Speaking of the characters, they were vivid and dimensional and complex and somehow yet, lovable. I understood all of their reasoning and decisions; their motivations and traumas were so thorough. I loved how they all contrasted each other and complemented each other at the same time. The entire cast was so great, even the minor side characters. I could seriously read a whole series about each character.
🪴 The sisterhood relationship between Desiree and Stella. They were polar opposites, but not in a way that felt lazy or stereotypical. One was loud, one was quiet, but they changed and shifted as time moved along. Their relationship was codependent yet completely independent at the same time. They longed for each other and needed each other but also required space from one another to grow. Despite them being apart for most of the book, as a reader, you feel like you're reading about them side by side. The author so fluidly flipped between the two in a way that felt so natural yet so fitting to the story.
🪴 The exploration and portrayal of race. This book exposes both race and what it means to be a victim of it. But it also exposes colourism within the Black community and how people treat each other depending on the various skin tones. Stella and Desiree are both light-skinned Black women with the possibility to pass as white. Stella does, but Desiree doesn't. I can understand both women. One wants to escape racism and live a privileged life; the other wants to be true to herself. Both are valid, and it's racism's fault that this difficult choice exists in the first place. At the end of the day, identity is something we can control slightly, but our roots and true selves will always squeeze through the cracks our masks leave behind.
🪴 The theme of motherhood. Stella and Desiree aren't perfect mothers, but the theme of nature vs. nurture is so poignant yet subtle. I really liked taking notes on this throughout and noticing little things the author did to portray this.

I do think everyone will love something about this book. I hope you pick it up!

Content Warnings

jamiejanae_6's review against another edition

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emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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vasha's review against another edition

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mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book started out not bad; the first few chapters are a depiction of the 1950s/1960s in Mallard, a very small Louisiana town inhabited by Black people who are obsessed with light skin; they introduce Desiree and Stella, twin sisters whose identities are tangled up in each other. The writing style is pleasant and unobtrusive and the story keeps moving forward. Desiree is the protagonist of the first section, and she makes for a pretty passive one. I wish we'd seen more of her interactions with her daughter Jude (she shocked Mallard by bringing home a very dark child); that would've been about the most interesting thing about her. Her boyfriend, a traveling bounty hunter, is possibly my favorite character in the book, though, and there are some nice bits about their cautious relationship and Jude's ambiguity about accepting him. Stella, who decides to become white and hide her origins, comes to the fore later in the book; she's very unpleasant, but at least compelling to read about!

As the book went on, I liked it less and less. It's not much of a work of historical fiction: the author only evokes the most obvious, familiar cultural touchstones in the journey from the 1950s to the 1980s. And some things struck me as anachronistic. For example, some young people in the 1980s are shown unselfconsciously using the word "Negro." They were born about the same time as me; the author's twenty years younger, so let me correct her: that word was already antediluvian in the 80s. The cast of supporting characters, too, is stock, as are details of the life of a bored housewife or of a college student (frankly, the latter is completely unbelievable).

Now, the one thing that bugged the holy hell out of me: the depiction of Jude's boyfriend Reese, who's a trans man. There is practically not one page he appears on, where him being trans, and things about his transition, aren't mentioned, and everything he's depicted doing is in relation to that. I eventually started a "drinking game": oh, Jude's going to apartment-hunt with Reese, or talk to him about her mother, or whatever; will the author bring up Reese's surgeries, scars, etc.? Yup.... This is objectivization, maybe fetishization, whatever, not good.

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