6
OCTOBER 20�27, 2021
FROM THE SHELF
CHECKING OUT THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
‘The Vanishing Half’
By Moira Macdonald
The Seattle Times
B
rit Bennett is intrigued by per-
formance, and her bestselling
2020 novel “The Vanishing Half”
features a masterful one at its
center: Stella, a light-skinned Black
woman, leaves her small Louisiana
town in the 1950s to begin a new
life in which she passes as white.
It’s a performance that becomes
all-encompassing for her; Stella
abandons her mother, her identi-
cal twin sister, Desiree, and her
past. “But for all Desiree knew,” the
book’s narrator muses, “Stella had
lived white for half her life now, and
maybe acting for that long ceased
to be acting altogether. Maybe
pretending to be white eventually
made it so.”
In a telephone interview from
her New York home, Bennett
spoke of the layers in her book.
“I found that aspect of passing
to be really fascinating,” she said.
An element of race, or any type of
identity, she said, is performance
— “how we perform it to other
people, how we read the perfor-
mances of others.”
Other characters in the book
— such as Stella’s daughter, who
becomes an actor — perform in
other ways, allowing Bennett to
explore “what does it mean when
the performance begins to feel
real. … So much of Stella’s journey
is watching her going from very
consciously performing when she
was young to where she ends up,
where the performance has kind
of taken over.” Reading Nella Lars-
en’s novel “Passing” in college — a
1929 tale of two biracial friends,
one of whom chooses to pass for
white — inspired her, as did the
idea of exploring the sometimes
claustrophobic closeness that can
happen between sisters.
“The Vanishing Half” is Ben-
nett’s second novel, and it came
with high expectations. Bennett’s
acclaimed debut, the coming-
of-age tale “The Mothers,” was
published in 2016; its author, then
a recent graduate of Stanford
University and the University of
Michigan’s Master of Fine Arts
program, was only 26. Long before
the publication of “The Mothers,”
however, Bennett had begun work
on “The Vanishing Half,” want-
ing to write a book that followed
characters through a larger period
of their lives. It was a very diff er-
ent experience — for the second
book, she had an editor and an
agent — but the author was grate-
ful to have started the book with
no external pressure.
Bennett doesn’t outline her
novels; she said she likes to see
where the writing process takes
her. “The Vanishing Half” changed
substantially during the four or
fi ve years of its birth. Initially, she
thought it’d be a very clean, neat
story: half from the perspective
from one twin, half from another.
“I think for me, a lot of the
process of writing this book was
learning how to divorce myself
from what I originally thought the
book might be, and learning to
follow all of the characters who
interested me, who surprised me
when they entered the story, and
I wanted to follow them for a little
bit of time — just allowing myself
to go where I was most inter-
ested.”
The book became a tale of
mothers and daughters — De-
siree’s daughter Jude, a very
dark-skinned young woman eager
to escape that small town; Stella’s
daughter Kennedy, blond and
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privileged and perpetually disap-
pearing into a role. And the men
in their lives intrigued Bennett as
well: Reese, a trans man in a com-
plicated but loving relationship
with Jude; Early, a bounty hunter
distracted from his assignment by
his attraction to Desiree; Stella’s
husband, Blake, formerly her boss,
who has no idea what secret his
wife holds.
Published in June 2020, “The
Vanishing Half” was an immedi-
ate bestseller, emerging at a time
when readers were especially
hungry for novels of racial identity.
“You never can predict the context
that will be surrounding your
book!” Bennett said.
She was surprised that so
many readers supported the book
during the pandemic.
“I didn’t know if people were
going to want to read books or be
able to buy books, or if bookstores
would be open,” she said. “I really
did not know what to expect.” But
she was heartened to fi nd that
books were “pandemic-proof
media.” While movies, concerts,
theater and other art forms were
on hold, “we could still buy books,
they’re shelf-stable, you can read
them and feel like you’re connect-
ing to others. … One of the things
that’s been surprising to me about
publishing books is the realization
of not only how much people do
read but how deeply they care
about books. People are really
turning to books as a way to com-
municate with their friends and
their families.”
Another unexpected but
welcome development was the
acquisition of “The Vanishing Half”
(in a highly competitive rights auc-
tion) by HBO for a limited series.
Playwrights Aziza Barnes (“BLKS”)
and Jeremy O. Harris (“Slave Play”)
have signed on as writers and
executive producers; Issa Rae
(HBO’s “Insecure”) is also among
the producers. The scripts are cur-
rently in development.
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