Author of the week

Brit Bennett

Don’t tell Brit Bennett the time has passed for a novel about passing, said Ellen Gamerman in The Wall Street Journal. The Vanishing Half, already one of 2020’s best-sellers, appears “on track to become a 352-page cultural phenomenon,” and its story centers on the separate paths taken by twin sisters born in the 1950s Jim Crow South with skin that could pass as black or white. Bigger in its first three months even than megahits Where the Crawdads Sing or Little Fires Everywhere, Bennett’s acclaimed second novel arrived at just the moment the George Floyd protests erupted and readers began seeking a new understanding of race dynamics. Bennett welcomes the conversation while claiming her interest was in exploring how anyone establishes an identity. “One of the things I feel most internally resistant to is the idea this book will solve anything for anybody. What I’m interested in is the question.”

When Bennett started the novel in 2014, she couldn’t have imagined that people around the world would be marching against racism in 2020, said Lynell George in the Los Angeles Times. The California native had been inspired by her mother’s casual mention of a Cajun town in Louisiana where people used to marry to produce ever paler children. Now the story has been sold to HBO and looks likely have a long Covid-era run even as the fervor of June’s protests wanes. “It was like people baking banana bread,” Bennett says. “Oh, now we’re learning how to bake sourdough, and now we’re learning about race… and then the next thing happens. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that doesn’t happen. That it doesn’t just drift by.”