A review by juushika
Passing by Nella Larsen

4.0

The entwined lives and complicated friendship of two black women, one of whom lives passing as white. I sometimes forget how beautiful literary fiction can be--this reminds me somewhat of Highsmith's The Price of Salt for its ability to evoke precise moments and small, private revelations; also for its discomforting interpersonal dynamic and elevated, tense tone. (Passing is, however, only subtextually queer.) Sometimes the tone gets in the way, and the ending is particularly melodramatic. But the themes are robust, a study of intercommunity issues and the complexity of identity and of racialized experience. In a less stylized or longer book, it may be dense; here, it reads swift and deceptively easy.