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.