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  • The Vanishing Half: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2021
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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
91,274 global ratings
5 star
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4 star
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3 star
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2 star
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The Vanishing Half: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

The Vanishing Half: Shortlisted for the Women's Prize 2021

byBrit Bennett
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Top positive review

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Cindy
5.0 out of 5 starsCouldn't Put This Down
Reviewed in Australia on 18 August 2020
This was a beautifully written and compelling story of intergenerational trauma, identity and the choices that end up defining who we are.

The characters were vividly drawn with story lines that spanned across decades so that I felt like I had come to intimately know these characters and the shapes of their lives by the end. Through the characters of the twin girls we see themes of loss, identity, race, society, survival and motherhood play out and I love how the book tackles these bigger themes without detracting from the core story of the girls' disappearance and separation.

The writing was stunning in that quiet, unassuming way, balancing descriptive prose with a grounded realism, "A town always looked different once you returned, like a house where all the furniture had shifted three inches. You wouldn't mistake it for a stranger's house but you'd keep banging your shins on the table corners"

I couldn't put this book down but I also didn't want it to end, and I wished the story had continued to the next generation of daughters because it is a story that I could keep reading.
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5 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Philip Cassell
2.0 out of 5 starsDisappointing
Reviewed in Australia on 16 November 2020
I found this novel to have some interesting features; the basic storyline is involving enough; and its description of prejudice is sometimes moving.
However, far too much of the writing is banal and repetitive. Too much of the novel is static.
All novels are fabrications, of course; however, the concoctedness of Vanishing Half leaps out at the reader and spoils it. For me at least.
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One person found this helpful

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From Australia

Philip Cassell
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Reviewed in Australia on 16 November 2020
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I found this novel to have some interesting features; the basic storyline is involving enough; and its description of prejudice is sometimes moving.
However, far too much of the writing is banal and repetitive. Too much of the novel is static.
All novels are fabrications, of course; however, the concoctedness of Vanishing Half leaps out at the reader and spoils it. For me at least.
One person found this helpful
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FiCo
3.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Tale, Great Holiday Read
Reviewed in Australia on 8 March 2021
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The tale of twin sisters who took different paths in life. Likeable characters, an enjoyable read. The story somehow familiar, yet original enough to entertain.
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Renee Oberin
3.0 out of 5 stars Plenty of questions in this story
Reviewed in Australia on 31 December 2020
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Who are we ? What is a lie ? Can we ever leave our born identities behind? What are the consequences?

This story touched on these but didn’t get close enough to exploring all the possible tendrils of answers.
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Audrey Princi
2.0 out of 5 stars Tried to cover too many topics
Reviewed in Australia on 25 February 2021
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You think this is a story about one generation "vanishing" and passing but it isn't, story jumps around and focus's on the next generation without dealing with the why's in the first generation.
I thought too many other topics mentioned not really dealt with - transgender? Left with alot of questions.
I didnt love it.
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Amanda
3.0 out of 5 stars I felt I needed more at the end
Reviewed in Australia on 14 April 2021
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I read this very quickly, I enjoyed it but felt the ending was too abrupt. I could have done with five more chapters!!
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Karen Weir
1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t buy this book as Amazon will not give you a refund!!
Reviewed in Australia on 19 December 2020
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Just horrible I could not finish it!!
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From other countries

edbusa
1.0 out of 5 stars The story was not centered on the Twin sisters!!!
Reviewed in the United States on 25 June 2020
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This is clearly a case off false advertising. I expected the book to convey a story on the dynamics identical twins raised in the racist south. THIS WAS NOT THE CORE OF THE BOOK. Instead it focused on the dynamics of the LGBTQ community. I have absolutely no interest in such matters. Thoroughly disappointed.
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Ralph Blumenau
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
3.0 out of 5 stars Problems of racial and gender identity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2020
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The first three quarters of the book are excellent. They tell of the lives of twin sisters, Desiree and Stella, who were born in the fictional Louisiana town of Mallard, where the population of African-Americans were all light-skinned and looked down on dark skinned people.

This had not prevented whites from a neighbouring town from lynching their father for an imagined racial transgression.

In 1964 Desiree and Stella ran way to St Louis. But they soon went their separate ways. Stella, traumatized by having seen her father lynched, had decided to pass as white. She had taken a job in St Louis. Her employer, a wealthy white banker called Blake Sanders had taken a liking to her, and she to him; and when he was moved to Boston and asked her to go with him, she had agreed, and had simply walked out on Desiree without telling her where she had gone. There she married him and bore him a white daughter, Kennedy. Neither Blake nor Kennedy knew that she was not white. Later they moved to Los Angeles.

For years Stella had no contact with Desiree. She was always terrified that she would be found out, and avoided any contact with black people. The exception was her friendship for a while with Loretta Walker, a black woman who lived in the house opposite hers; but this ended when Kennedy, playing with Loretta’s daughter Cindy, made a racist comment to Cindy.

Desiree had gone to Washington D.C, and married a black man, Sam Winston, and bore him a black daughter, Jude. But Sam was violent towards Desiree, and she and Jude left him and returned to Mallard in 1968.
In 1982 Jude was living in Los Angeles with Reese Carter, a transgender man with whom, sharing his bed, she has an affaire of sorts, and with Barry, who performs as a drag queen twice a month. Reese and Barry, like Stella, were passing for something they were not.

One day, Jude thought she had seen Stella, the lookalike of her mother; and she also met Kennedy.
Kennedy had become a rebel, had dropped out school, and against her mother’s wishes, had taken up acting in a crummy play in a crummy theatre. Jude took a job as a dogsbody at the theatre in order to see more of her cousin and in the hope of meeting Stella. On the last night of the show she did meet Stella, and introduced herself to her as Desiree’s daughter. Stella froze, then walked away. Angrily, Jude told Kennedy that their mothers were twins, and that Stella had been lying to Kennedy all her life.

The secret was out: Stella knew she had been rumbled, and Kennedy knew the truth.

I found the remaining quarter of the book, dealing in part with the consequences of this situation, very confusing. Hence only three stars, when so much of the book deserves five.
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J. Baker
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing. Weak characters. Unanswered plot lines
Reviewed in the United States on 25 June 2020
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The premise of the story about the twins lives got lost in many pages of LGBTQ trans issues. It was like there was not enough going on with the sisters lives, the author felt it necessary to throw this red herring into the story. And I don’t say plot because it was not part of the plot. I was very intrigued about the lives of the sisters, but I got no satisfaction of what made them what they were. They just moved from one day to the next like they could not take charge of their lives. They each suffered a malaise that was similarly experienced but the author was too lazy to explore it. Ending was unsatisfying and abrupt.
674 people found this helpful
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Teresa
3.0 out of 5 stars Overhyped, somewhat disappointed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 June 2021
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I thought that from the pages and pages of accolades printed at the start of this book that it would be a literary tour de force. Not so. It's a very plainly written book that fails to satisfy, with a somewhat abrupt conclusion with many unanswered questions. The idea of a light skin black woman choosing to pass as white is an interesting one. However, I never really felt I understood or believed Stella's motives. The book is an easy read which I finished in a few days. But despite being set in the 60s, 70s and 80s there was very little sense of time or place as the writing style was so simple lacking any real evocative descriptive writing. There was also amention of 'breath taking plot twists' . Well perhaps my book was missing a chapter or so as I saw no sign of those. So, an engaging enough read, but fails to deliver in the final third. Also, a strange trans gender theme that seemed to be shoehorned in to the plot completely unnecessary and only to tick a box for being, somehow 'relevant' to today's audiences. This theme felt clumsy, added nothing, and again felt unresolved.
15 people found this helpful
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