Intrigued by an ad for secretarial work, the quieter sister, Stella, decides to try to pass as white. In 1952, when the sisters are 16, they decide to run away to New Orleans to see what the wider world has to offer. It's a town where all the residents are light-skinned African Americans. The Vanishing Half tells the multi-generational story of the Vignes sisters, Desiree and Stella, two very pretty identical twins who grow up in the small town of Mallard, La. In The Vanishing Half, Bennett takes up a subject perfectly suited to her signature melodramatic style: I'm talking about "racial passing," which has inspired, mostly tragic novels like Nella Larsen's Passing, as well as Douglas Sirk's grand cinematic tear-jerker, Imitation of Life. Now, I'm recognizing that's how Bennett rolls as a novelist: embracing melodrama as a beguiling way to delve into difficult topics.
I liked her debut novel, The Mothers- about the long consequences of an unplanned teenage pregnancy - but I'd also faulted it for being melodramatic. That relatively small moment in this novel caught my attention it felt to me that Bennett here was also talking in defense of her own fiction and its heavy "trafficking" in coincidences and other over-the-top plot contrivances. In fact, some of the greatest classic actresses - Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo - trafficked in it from time to time." She's an attractive blonde pushing 30, who, after years of trying to make it in the serious theater, lands a role on a soap opera.īennett writes that when Kennedy calls her parents to tell them about her big break, she assures them that "There was nothing wrong with melodrama. One of the characters that comes to the fore in the second half of Brit Bennett's new novel, The Vanishing Half, is a young actress named Kennedy Sanders. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.
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