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THE

VANISHING

HALF

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!

From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

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. Many 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' storylines 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.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

  

 

“[A] page-turner about once-inseparable twin girls now living radically different lives.”" 

O, The Oprah Magazine

“A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….”

 Entertainment Weekly

"We’ve been impatiently waiting for Brit Bennett’s next book ever since we closed the back cover of The Mothers…It’s a deeply emotional exploration of race, identity, and expectations." 

Hello Giggles

“The New York Times bestselling author . . . is back with a multi-generational saga . . .  Early buzz suggests that this new novel is every bit as moving and thought-provoking as Bennett’s acclaimed debut.”

LitHub

“The Vanishing Half promises to be as riveting . . . as Bennett’s first.”

Bitch Media

 

“Impressive . . .Effortlessly switching between the voices . . . Bennett renders her characters and their struggles with great compassion . . . This prodigious follow-up surpasses Bennett’s formidable debut.” 

 Publishers Weekly Starred Review

 

"Propulsive and compassionate, Bennett’s follow-up to The Mothers is not to be missed."  

Harper’s Bazaar

"The Mothers introduced Brit Bennett as an important new voice in literature in 2016 . . . so her follow-up is, of course, a well-earned Event." 

Thrillist

“Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.”

Wall Street Journal

“We’ve waited four long years for this follow-up to The Mothers from Brit Bennett . . . it’s so close we can taste it.”

Bookpage

“ Assured and magnetic. . . expertly paced . . . . Bennett is deeply engaged in the unknowability of other people and the scourge of colorism. . . . a tour de force . . It calls up Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the book’s 50-year-old antecedent… Bennett keeps all these plot threads thrumming and her social commentary crisp… in this rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.” 

Kirkus Starred Review