The Vox Book Club has selected Brit Bennett’s critically acclaimed novel The Vanishing Halfas its August pick.
Bennett’s book, the follow-up to her 2016 debut, The Mothers, follows two Black twin sisters who run away from their rural Louisiana home but separate when one begins passing as White. A reviewer for Kirkus called the novel a “rich, sharp story about the way identity is formed.”
Bennett told Kirkus that the book was inspired by her mother.
“It’s based on a place my mother remembered from her childhood in Louisiana,” Bennett said. “She mentioned offhandedly a town of people who continually intermarried so that their kids would get lighter in each generation…. I was able to draw on some historical records, although I was more interested in writing toward memory and myth than I was in writing toward history.”
Other critics have praised the novel as well. At the New York Times, Parul Sehgal wrote that “Bennett excels in conjuring the silences of families and in evoking atmosphere,” while at the Guardian, critic Michael Donkor called the novel “a timely testament to the redemptive powers of community, connection and looking beyond the self.”
Constance Grady, who runs Vox’s book club, called the book “exquisite.”
“There’s a lot to delve into here: the history of narratives of passing, the power of American fairy tales, the question of how we are bound by our bodies and our families,” Grady wrote.
Vox’s month-long discussion of the bookwill culminate in a virtual live conversation with Bennett on Aug. 27.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
