black and white

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: historical fiction

Review: There's a small town in Louisiana, settled by blacks, whose descendents have carried on the tradition of essentially trying to breed themselves into light skin.  Some hundred years after the founding of the town, twin girls are born, who are inspeparable at birth, but after running away to find a better life, they realize that they are not so inspeparable as everyone thought.  In fact, they can separate so far from each other that one can choose to live as a white woman, while the other returns home.

The question of whether the sisters reunite, and whether Stella, who passes, ever reveals the truth about her background to her husband and daughter pulls the reader through the novel.  Stella and Desirée, her twin, and their daughters, one raised in the Jim Crow south, and the other in a life of privilege in Los Angeles, are characters that will not soon be forgotton.  Not everyone will love this book (although there's a lot to love), but everyone will come away from it asking questions about race and identity and how the two intersect.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

all lead-up

Eleanor by Jason Gurley
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Genre: Fantasy
Review:  I don't know how to rate or review this book.  I feel like I started at least three separate books between the same covers.  One book was a fairly normal story of a family broken by tragedy.  Another took place somewhere outside of reality.  And the third took place in a very contained world populated by a single person.  Although all of these stories came together well, I couldn't decide whether I was supposed to be reading "normal" fiction with a touch of fantasy, or the other way around.

The writing itself is lovely, at least in 2/3 of the stories I was reading.  Gurley's descriptions are vivid, and the pace of the novel is very well done.  I think my ultimate problem with this book was that I didn't get the story I wanted.  The bulk of the book is taken up with the idea that Eleanor's ultimate mission is to unravel the tragedy that happened to her family, which she ultimately does.  But I found myself not overwhelmingly compelled by the lead-up to the reversal (i.e. the entire book), because I wanted to know what happened next.  Maybe Gurley will write that story, along with 2 or 3 others, in his next book.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

puzzle pieces

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction

Review: An interesting study on identity and identity theft, reading this book is kind of like putting together a puzzle. At the beginning, you're reading three separate (and interesting) stories. Slowly, it becomes clear that the stories all fit together, although it takes a bit longer for the connections to emerge. To complicate things, we are not given the story entirely in chronological order, making it sort of like putting together a 3-D puzzle. Unfortunately, the same effort put into drawing the puzzle pieces was not put into the actual resolution of the book, but a little bit of imagination on the reader's part takes care of that.

FTC Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

Jane Eyre with a twist

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Rating: 4 stars (out of five)
Genre: fiction, mystery, Gothic
Challenge: A-Z (title)
Review: This was a very engaging story. Written in the style of a Gothic novel, this story is very reminiscent of Jane Eyre, with a unique twist. The secret to the story is revealed to the reader as the main character figures it out, in a very realistic way.

What prevented this book from getting 5 stars was what I felt to be an unnecessary subplot that only served to bog the story down. I understand that our main character needed a "hook" of some kind to be convinced to write the biography she's been charged with writing, but I felt that Setterfield took the "ghost story" aspect of her lost twin too far.

That would not stop me from heartily recommending this book to anyone who likes Gothic novels.