Monthly Archives: June 2021

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The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett

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As this popular novel opens, a 30-year-old woman returns to her hometown. Residents are shocked to see her, and word quickly travels around that one of the Vignes twins has been spotted. There are two reasons for this outsized reaction, one being that Desiree and her sister Stella have not been seen since they disappeared when they were 16 while everyone else was at the Founder’s Day Dance, dismayed that their mother pulled them out of school to start working as domestic servants. But the greater reason for the town’s shock is the dark-skinned daughter Desiree brings with her, described by the owner of the diner as “blue-black . . . like she flown direct from Africa.”

Mallard, Louisiana is an all-black town, like Eatonville in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Fictional—though based on a real town the author’s mother heard of—Mallard has a peculiar philosophy, created by the town’s founder: the best way to combat racism is to lighten their skin by always having children with lighter- and lighter-skinned people.

By the time of this story, most people in town can pass for white, which is exactly what Stella began doing when she applied for a job in New Orleans. She married a white man and neither he nor their daughter knows Stella grew up identifying as black.

Rebellious Desiree married the darkest-skinned man she could find, hence her daughter Jude’s dark skin. Now, in 1968, only a few weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, she’s come home with a scarf hiding the bruises on her neck, hoping her husband won’t be able to find her. Unknown to her, he has hired a bounty hunter to find her.

There’s plenty to like about this story. The situation carries dramatic potential: Desiree adjusting to being back in the small town; Jude suffering the prejudice against her due to her skin color; Desiree and her mother trying to find a new connection; Stella wrestling with her reaction when a black family moves into their all-white neighborhood; and the threat of the bounty hunter on top of all that.

I was particularly interested in Stella’s story, having recently read Nella Larsen’s Passing. I’m fascinated by the strain of pretending to be someone you’re not. Of course, it’s not hard, and even fun, to do it for a little while, but to keep it up for years would not only make you feel as though you are always in danger, but would also cut you off from your past. Those memories and the narrative through-line that we create from our life experiences are foundations of our identity, so walling off part of them must have consequences.

There’s another aspect of this story that is fascinating: the hold that the culture we grow up in continues to assert on our actions and reactions, our emotions and desires. We may think we’ve left those childhood beliefs behind, no matter how hard our parents drilled them into us, but they crop up when we least expect it.

As a writer, one thing I’m taking away from this book is the subtle way we can use the works of our literary forebears. In addition to Hurston and Larsen, there are also references to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. If the reader recognizes these works, the references add depth to the story and provide a sense of familiarity. At the same time, the story stands alone; a reader who doesn’t know these works won’t notice the difference.

What underpins the entire story is the one-drop rule, that one drop of black blood makes you black. Of course, that terrible rule was commonly accepted in 1968, so it’s appropriate for the story. However, we still see its effects today in who identifies as white and who as black. There are other aspects of racial prejudice, such as descriptions of people as an Oreo or a snowball, and colorism itself. And of course, the concept of race itself is a social construct. Still, Mallard’s obsession with lightening their skin through successive generations makes me wonder when, if ever, they would consider themselves white. What vanishes? What remains?

Have you read this best-selling novel? What did you think of it?

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The Trespasser, by Tana French

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Tana French’s mystery series. The early ones are police procedurals, with members of Dublin’s Murder Squad as protagonists. Since it’s the same squad, a minor character from one book sometimes reappears or even stars in a later book.

That is the case here. The protagonist and secondary character from the previous book swap places. In The Secret Place, Detective Stephen Moran has been looking for an opportunity to get on the elite Murder Squad when it arrives as a new clue in the unsolved murder of a popular boy on the grounds of a girl’s boarding school.

Stephen’s previous contact with one of the girls, Holly Mackey, daughter of detective Frank Mackey (protagonist of Faithful Place and a character in The Likeness), led her to bring him the clue. His ability to communicate with the girls persuades the lead detective Antoinette Conway to keep him on the case—provisionally. We follow Stephen’s twists and turns as he tries to figure out the best approach for each witness, determined to impress the bad-tempered Conway. She believes that the entire squad is out to get her for being a woman and that she’ds been given this one for her first case on purpose to see her fail.

In The Trespasser, Conway is our point-of-view character. Stephen Moran is still working with her, now as her partner and member of the squad. They are assigned minor cases, mostly domestics, when finally they are tapped to investigate what is apparently a domestic gone wrong: a woman found murdered in her own home amid the wreckage of what was obviously meant to be a romantic dinner for two.

They are also given Jimmy Breslin, star of the squad, to work with them which makes Conway bristle. She’s unsure whether this is more harassment or a lack of confidence in her, both equally maddening. Breslin pushes them to arrest the boyfriend, despite the lack of evidence, but Conway and Moran see more paths to investigate.

The interplay between the partners is what makes this book spectacular. Throughout, but especially in the interview room, Conway and Moran bounce off each other, inspire each other, support each other, tiptoe around each other’s wounds—all the things good partners should do. Until they don’t.

Nobody does friendships like Tana French. While most stories rely on love stories for emotional content, French gives us friendships, intense as any romance, whether the working friendship of partners, the intense intimacy of teenage girls, or—as in The Likeness—the friends who can become another family.

I’m not really sure how she does it, beyond the individuality and authenticity of their voices. It’s partly what they are willing to do for each other. It’s partly what they understand intuitively about each other. In this book, Moran and Conway have worked together long enough that when they are interviewing a suspect they can anticipate what the other is about to say. Acting as one, they can volley questions and statements to guide the suspect where they want them to go.

With the girls at the school, French brings out the passionate loyalty and secrecy of their friendships. Through interviews we learn what others say about them. We see and hear how little they themselves give the detectives. We learn more about them in the contrast and conflict between different cliques. And when the girls are alone, we sense through their thoughts and actions the volatility of their emotions and the potential for devastation.

This book in particular also examines the stories people tell themselves, stories about themselves and about others, and the influence of these stories on their actions and reactions. I’m fascinated by this theme and looking for other books that might examine it.

As you can tell, there’s a lot more going on here than simply a puzzle to be solved, though that’s here too, and it’s a knotty one. This layered and intricate story is captivating on so many levels.

Have you read any of Tana French’s novels? Which one is your favorite?

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We Are as Gods, by Kate Daloz

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Recently I attended a talk about the flood of hippies and other progressives moving to Vermont in the 1970s and this book was mentioned. Having lived in a rural part of the state briefly in 1971, I was well aware of how conservative it was and so have always been curious as to how these two wildly different populations managed to coexist. Daloz’s book, subtitled Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America, helps me understand.

The story of the Myrtle Hill commune provides the narrative backbone, with digressions to describe the commune movement in the U.S. In 1970, three young people—Lorraine, Fletcher and Craig—found the 116-acre former potato farm and within a few weeks Craig had bought it, using his inheritance following his father’s sudden death for the down payment. Craig then created a land trust so it would be owned in common with everyone taking turns covering the mortgage payments.

After the group, which quickly swelled in numbers, discovered the joys of mud season in Vermont, they spent an idyllic summer living in tents, tipis and lean-tos. “It was like a weeks-long camping trip, but more romantic because this was not a mere vacation, but, for all of them, their new way of life.

They were determined to be self-sufficient, acquiring chickens, two milk cows and a beef calf who all had to be cared for. Besides building a rough shed for the chickens, they dug an outhouse and planted a garden. Water for cooking and washing had to be hauled in five-gallon buckets in the back of Craig’s truck. Lorraine prepared meals over an open fire, while Nancy cared for the children. The group had big plans for the future—a school for the children, wind-powered generators, a radio station—but their immediate task was to build a geodesic dome for winter housing.

We also get to know their neighbors, some who were original Vermonters and some, like the author’s parents, who wanted to go back to the land but were not interested in the communal part.

As with other groups during this idealistic period, the Myrtle Hill residents had no leader, making decisions by consensus. They embraced free love and shared occasional after-dinner marijuana; their open-door policy welcomed curious hippies and others. However, as seen by the division of labor above, they had brought gender role assumptions with them. And then, of course, winter arrived.

Daloz follows the group from its idealistic beginnings through the gradual disenchantment, conveying their stories realistically yet with sympathy. Even in describing her parents’ path, her journalistic tone doesn’t waver.

It’s a fascinating book, combining the intense focus on Myrtle Hill and its neighbors with a wide-ranging summary of the counter-culture of the period, the growth and brief life of the commune movement, and the gradual recognition among the commune members that no one is actually self-sufficient. We all, including their original Vermont neighbors, rely on our community, and some jobs are full-time so are better left to someone else.

At first the book saddened me, as I remembered my own back-to-the-land dreams of the same period. But as I read on, I realised that my reasons for not eventually choosing that path had been good ones. I’d had the good fortune to work on a friend’s dairy farm for a season and quickly saw that while I enjoyed the work, such a life was not for me. The idea of writing at night when the farmwork was over turned out to be a ridiculous fantasy, for all the reasons that plagued the young people in this book.

So when I did start visiting communes thinking I might find one where I could prosper, I knew what to look for. I ended up choosing community over commune, and do not regret it. Still, this book brought back many pleasant memories and also helped me to better understand the culture in today’s Vermont.

Have you read a book that took you back to an earlier period in your life?

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The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner

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In a back alley in 1791 London, a wooden door opens to what appears to be a storeroom. However, those in the know are aware that behind a hidden door lies Nella Clavinger’s apothecary shop. Like her mother before her, she caters only to women and dispenses powders and salves to ease their pains. However, unlike her mother—and this is why her shop is secret—she also sells poisons to women who need to get rid of a man who is mistreating them.

Nella’s work with poisons has prematurely aged her, and she suffers pain and weakness. One day she is surprised when it is not a woman who arrives at the appointed time to collect a poison, but a 12-year-old girl, Eliza Fanning, a maid picking it up for her mistress. Eliza is fascinated by Nella and begs to be taught her skills. Nella refuses, but Eliza’s presence still has catastrophic consequences.

There’s more: This book has a dual timeline.

In present-day London Caroline Parcewell is visiting from Ohio. Although this long-planned trip was to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary, she has left her husband at home, after discovering that he has been having an affair.

As she wanders disconsolately around the city, she stumbles on a mudlarking tour, mudlarks being the name for people in earlier centuries who dug in the edges of the Thames looking for anything they can sell. She finds a mysterious vial and eventually suspects she’s on the trail of eighteenth-century London’s “apothecary murderer.”

The two stories intertwine, both speaking of women trying to control their own destinies. Nella keeps a register, the one started by her mother, noting the name of each customer, the date, and what they purchased. She knows that women like her—not wealthy, not royalty—are not recorded or remembered. So her register is one small way to recognise women who would otherwise be forgotten.

Even as Nella tries to find a way out of the troubles that come upon her, Caroline looks back over her marriage, assessing where she has abandoned her own dreams and debating whether she can continue with the marriage.

There’s a lot of suspense, with as many twists and turns as a back alley in eighteenth-century London. As always, after my first immersive read, I examined some technical aspects of the book. In this case, I was interested in how the two timelines bounced off each other, sometimes reflecting, sometimes diverging. I was also interested in the way information was gradually revealed, heightening the suspense. I have a few minor quibbles, but overall the book was a good read and a fine way to while away a rainy afternoon.

Can you recommend a book with a dual timeline?