The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“Maybe it was a mistake to return to Mallard. Maybe they should have gone somewhere new, started over fresh. But it was too late now for regrets. She could already hear the river. She started toward it, her daughter hanging heavy around her neck. The river would right her. She would stand on the bank and remember the way.” 

The twins Stella and Desiree Vignes are synonymous with their hometown of Mallard, Louisiana. So small it doesn’t even warrant a dot on the state map, Mallard is more a village of sorts, made up of colored people, but only those distinctly light, capable of passing as white. Desiree is loud and makes her presence known, often getting the two into trouble and demanding more out of life. Stella is studious, depending on her education for an eventual escape from the smallness of her existence. The twosome feel emotionally responsible for their mother’s well being, their father having been murdered years before. When it is decided the girls will quit school and start cleaning houses to help their mother pay bills, the girls disappear from town, and no one hears from them for a decade, until one twin returns with a dark-skinned girl on her back. “You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood. Somehow, the Vignes twins believed themselves capable of both.” 

The story unfolds like an onion. Brit Bennett weaves intricate narrative detail with compelling dialogue and intrigue. The core of this novel involves identity, and how race plays into who one can be in the 1950s. One twin finds security in erasing her past and diving into a false sense of presence. The other returns to the place of her youth to escape her present and discover her past. Though identical, their lives diverge and for the first time, they live as individuals. “The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.” This story explores what race meant in the mid century, how it limited one’s options, defined one’s perspective, and continued to impact the following generations. 

Bennett writes eloquently, capturing the essence of the south, the push-and-pull, love/hate relationship with place. We can’t be from anywhere else, but can we determine where we end up? Can we ever escape our roots? She explores why some choose to leave and others choose to stay. The multi-generational story showcases how a mother’s decisions made in good faith can bring lifelong heartache and regret. She shows that material success can’t protect one from emotional turmoil, and how pretending to be something we’re not can lead one further and further away from peace. Each chapter is told from various points of view, the past becoming more clear as the present develops. Just as the twins are learning how their past determines their present, readers are learning the same. The novel also contemplates what it means to grieve, not only the dead, but also the living.