The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)

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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (2020)

Her second novel. Lyrical. Unputdownable. Read it in one sitting yesterday.

QTD from the LA TIMES

Novelist Brit Bennett remembers the day her mother began reeling off stories from her Southern past. There was one story too good to let slip by.

“She brought it up the way parents often do, like it’s something everybody knew … that there were towns where people would intermarry so that their children would get lighter with each generation,” Bennett recalls. “And I was like: ‘Wait! Go back to that.’”

Captivated, Bennett pulled out her phone and jotted down one sentence. That was in 2015. The idea took root. Next, twin sisters and a Louisiana landscape sprouted, then filled in. That single sentence became the foundation for Bennett’s new book, “The Vanishing Half,” a novel that has topped bestseller lists this summer and spurred a Hollywood bidding war.

Her mother was born and raised in rural Louisiana in a small town named Palmetto, while Bennett grew up in Oceanside in San Diego County. “So I’d never imagined a town like this,” she says. “It stuck with me, I think, because it was a very different way to think about skin color and an attempt to genetically engineer your population. It was very specific and very disturbing.”