THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett

My expectations for this book were too high.  I know it’s probably not PC to say this, but I thought Phillip Roth’s similarly themed The Human Stain was better.  It is also about a character passing as white, but Roth’s book is dripping with irony, as a college professor sacrifices his career for his secret, whereas owning up to his heritage would have gained him a pardon for a seemingly racist comment.  Here we have a woman, Stella, who, along with her twin sister Desiree, grow up in a Louisiana town populated with light-skinned black residents. The twins run off to New Orleans, where Stella gets a job as a secretary.  Everyone in the company, including her boss, whom she marries, assumes that she is white.  Desiree, in contrast, marries a very dark-skinned man and bears a daughter, Jude, whose coloring is like her father’s.  The novel eventually focuses more on Jude’s story, alongside that of Stella’s privileged daughter Kennedy.  It’s no surprise that Desiree and Jude are more grounded, comfortable in their own skin.  Stella, on the other hand, has completely divorced herself from her family and actually fears that black people will recognize her for who she is.  Kennedy is the stereotypical vacuous blonde whose strained relationship with her emotionally distant mother renders her a little unmoored.  I think that all of these characters could have benefited from a little more depth.  My favorite character is Early Jones, who hunts missing persons and has been carrying a torch for Desiree for years.  When he finds her, he has to decide whether to convey her whereabouts to her abusive husband or tarnish his perfect record on the job.  Finding Stella is an even more difficult task, but Jude manages to do that without even trying. Their meeting is such a far-fetched coincidence that it threw the whole authenticity of the book into question for me.