The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett

Jude's skin is 'blue black' yet her mother is so pale. When she meets a messed up white girl at a party she begins to unravel a connection and discovers her aunt living as a white woman. Jude and Reese have hidden secrets of their own. I loved this book and all the complex characters who are irresistible. I felt totally engaged with them from start to finish. The tension increases as the pages turn and makes this unputdownable!

Extract
On the road from El Dorado, Therese Anne Carter became Reese. He cut his hair in Plano, hacking off inches in a truck stop bathroom with a stolen hunting knife. Outside of Abilene, he bought a blue madras shirt and a leather belt with a silver stallion buckle; the shirt he still wore, the buckle he'd pawned in El Paso when he ran out of money but mentioned wistfully, still feeling its weight hanging at his waist. In Socorro, he began wrapping his chest in a white bandage, and by Las Cruces, he'd learned to walk again, legs wide, shoulders square. He told himself it was safer to hitchhike this way, but the truth was that he'd always been Reese. By Tucson, it was Therese who felt like a costume. How real was a person if you could shed her in a thousand miles?
Parallels
  • Trumpet by Jackie Kay
  • What We Left Behind by Robin Talley
  • Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer