The Vanishing Half - A Novel that Should Disappear by Britt Bennett

The novel focuses on identical twins, Desiree & Stella Vignes.  The twins' skin tones were so fair they could pass as white.  Growing up in small town in LA not listed on any map.  The twins are 8 when they witness the horror of their father dragged from their home and lynched.  Their father's murder occurred in the early 50s.  The impact resonates but not as much for its heinous act but for the fact the people of the town, including their family put a high value on lighter complexions.  Their own father had "imagined his children's children's children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream.  A more perfect Negro."  The melodrama is centered on claiming one's identity in the way in which one choses to live their life.  The twins are inseparable growing up. They flee their hometown wanting more than their domesticated, provincial life to find work in New Orleans.  Stella obtains a higher paying job in a law office presenting herself as white.  She ends up marrying her boss and leaves her sister without a clue or a trace; intending to disappear.  Desiree marries an abusive black man leaving him and returns to their mother's home with her daughter, Jude.  Jude has her father's very dark skin which is disdained amongst her classmates & grandmother.  Stella moves to LA and has a daughter, Kennedy, very fair complected and naturally assumed white.  Stella cuts off all ties with her past so as not to traced to her Negro heritage.  Neither twins' life is compelling.  The plodding plot leads to the implausible but probable intersection of Jude and Kennedy when Jude moves to LA.  Jude's love interest, Reese, is female presenting & living as male.  This adds an identical parallel of living outside the expected norms of society owing to one's genetic classification and claiming the identity that coincides with how the person identifies.  The story feels tired and lacks any emotional impact.  The subject matter covered isn't insightful and doesn't seem to matter in Bennett's banal storytelling.  Overlook this tepid novel.

Nat'l Bk Award Winner James McBride's Novel DEACON KING KONG - Long on Characters

James McBride is a man who wears many hats.  McBride received a Nat'l Book Award for his memoir THE COLOR of WATER ('13).  He's also a musician, novelist and hails from a multi-racial, cultural background having been born & raised in Brooklyn.  McBride brings together an army of character, some long in the tooth, deep into booze & drugs, some involved in the church and living on the outskirts of the big city scratching out an existence while balancing a co-existence with neighboring ethnicities.  The central character in this cast of plenty is Sportcoat, a deacon of the Negro congregational church, a boozer bent on an elixir dubbed King Kong. McBride's bi-racial, mixed religious & ethnic heritage plays out in this funny, frustrating and deeply touching reflection on people's interconnection.  The streets of Brooklyn are tough for the Negroes around the flag pole territory.  But, the people here look out for their own while trying not to rub elbows with other dissipating factions of low income Irish, Whites, Jews in an ever changing demographic now being over taken by drug lords, guns & violence.  The deft writing brings in a boat load of people who appear at odds with one another and even their own worst enemy.  Trust me - those who trust are to be trusted. This is driven home by McBride's deft hand for storytelling that cuts in so many differing swaths that when the treasure of this novel is ultimately uncovered, its compassion and wisdom comes in like a wrecking ball constructing a community of unity.  Sportcoat is the central scapegoat. He tries to redeem the young turks he taught to play ball as kids but have turned from the law to dealing in drug and gang mentality.  Sportcoat is an old drunk with a blind son, a dead wife Hettie whom he talks to constantly, and a bottomless thirst for booze.  The mayhem he creates & circumvents is hilarious.  However, Sportcoat is not the sole main event.  He has ole pal Sausage, Deems, his baseball protege turned drug dealer, and a bevy of strong willed women who are the wise, backbone holding everything & everyone together.  Elephant, is runs the family's Italian business from the piers in Brooklyn.  He brings in the goods when no one is lookin.  Elephant and a Centurian black nun serendipitously meet.  Their interlude leads to Elephant's reflection, "We got no block, she said,  The Italians don't own the block.  Nobody owns the block.  Nobody was king of nothing in New York.  It's life.  Survival.  How could he have been so stupid? he thought.  Is this what love does?  It changes you this way?  It allows you to see the past this clearly."  "Deacon King Kong" takes its time laying down its foundation reverberating with rewarding & delightful gems in the end.

Melinda's Top Ten Picks from My 2020 Reading List

2020 - A year to remember.  A year for reading and then more reading.  The following list is in alphabetical order by author and includes novels, non-fiction, short stories and poetry:


1.  Jericho Brown's Pulitzer Prize winning Poetry collection - THE TRADITION

2.  Susan Choi's novel TRUST EXERCISE - Coming of age in a UK school for the arts Nat'l Book
        Award Winner 2019

3.  Louise Erdrich's (Nat'l Bk Award Winner) novel THE NIGHTWATCHMAN

4.  Bernadine Evaristo's novel GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER - Man Booker Prize 2019

5.  Norman Lear's auto-biography EVEN THIS I GET to EXPERIENCE

6.  Andrea Levy's novel (b UK 1956-2019) THE LONG SONG - Whitbread Break of the Year 2004 -
         Slavery History in Jamaica

7.  Beth Macy's Non-Fiction DOPE SICK - The Opioid Epidemic - Shortlisted Andrew Carnegie
         Medal for Excellence

8.  Jenny Offill's novel WEATHER - Quirky philosophical, theological quandaries

9.  Kiley Reid's novel SUCH a FUN AGE - Contemporary take on systemic racism

10. Sally Rooney's (b Ireland 1991) novel CONVERSATIONS with FRIENDS

Honorable Mention:

1.  Karen Russell's Short Story Collection ORANGE WORLD - Sci-fi, Horror