"The Vanishing Half," by Brit Bennett

“The Vanishing Half” (Riverhead, 2020), by Brit Bennett, has received much attention since its publication earlier this year, and rightfully so. This is partly because the always-important topic of race in America has even more dramatically come to the fore in recent weeks. It is also because of Bennett’s powerful take on race and gender in the United States, both in her prior novel “The Mothers” (see my post of 1/30/17) and in this novel. Her two main characters are twin sisters who grow up in a Black family in a small southern Black town that prides itself on its population’s being very light-skinned. The twins run away together at the age of 16, first landing in New Orleans. They are extremely close. But then one day one of them, Stella, disappears without a word, leaving Desiree behind. Stella is the “vanishing half” of the title. The twins do not have any contact for years, as their lives completely diverge, and Stella has to keep a big secret. She slips into passing as White, and marries a White man who does not know she is Black; she lives in terror of someone finding out her secret. Desiree, on the other hand, chooses a very dark-skinned man for her partner. Both sisters have children; Stella’s daughter is blond, while Desiree’s daughter is dark-skinned. The two daughters become part of the story, and even meet by chance in Los Angeles. There is some closure at the end of the novel, but I won’t give any endings away. The topic of “passing” reminds me of Nella Larsen’s novel titled “Passing,” as well as other books on the subject. Bennett's novel and the others raise many questions about the meaning and significance of race in America, and all of the weight and freight carried by race and color and the way they are perceived. However, the novel is not only “about race,” but also a beautifully written and constructed story of the carefully delineated characters of the twins, their mother, their partners, their daughters, and others.

"Rebel Chef," by Dominique Crenn

Since I love restaurants, especially restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was happy to see that chef Dominique Crenn had written a memoir, “Rebel Chef: In Search of What Matters” (Penguin, 2020). Crenn writes of her adoption into a French family in the French countryside, her wonderful family, and her early love of cooking. The “rebel” part of her title comes from her desire to go further out into the world, to fight the rather rigid and male-dominated world of high-level restaurant chefs, and to create her own way of cooking. Eventually, after cooking in several restaurants of various types, including one in Indonesia, she became the three-Michelin-star chef-owner of three restaurants (Atelier Crenn, Petit Crenn, and Bar Crenn) in San Francisco. It was a hard road, but she was determined, always buoyed by her parents’ unconditional love and belief in her. Other topics include her wondering about her birth mother, and her gradual realization that she was a lesbian. Over the years, I have dined at all three of Crenn’s restaurants, and have so appreciated her creativity, as well as the thoughtfulness displayed in her food, the atmosphere of her restaurants, and her sense of hospitality. Besides choosing the best ingredients, drawing on the different cultures she has experienced, she is also inspired by poetry, even presenting diners with a poem at the beginning of their dining experiences. And as she says in this memoir, she purposely kept her restaurants quite small, and when possible comes out into the dining room to welcome and speak with the diners. She did this when a friend and I dined at her first restaurant in San Francisco, Atelier Crenn, some years ago, and we did indeed feel welcomed.

"The Jane Austen Society" and "Jane Austen Made Me Do It"

Regular readers of this blog KNOW with great certainty that periodically I will write about Jane Austen’s novels, as well as books about the author, her novels, and the many tribute novels and related books by others. Here I write about two more books in this category that I have recently read. “The Jane Austen Society” (St. Martin’s, 2020), a novel by Natalie Jenner, imagines a fictional version of the group of Austen fans who got together in the 1940s to preserve the house in Chawton where Austen spent her last and most productive years. Some of the members of this society already live in Chawton, and others have connected with those locals to form the Society. The members are mixed in terms of background, nationality, gender, age, class, type of work, and more, but they are bound by their common desire to buy, save, and take care of the house as a permanent tribute to Austen. There are many backstories and subplots, all interesting in a low-key, sometimes melancholic way. The writing is lovely and the devotion of the author and her characters is evident. I truly enjoyed this charming and thoughtful novel, not only for the Austen focus, but also for the portrayal of the small village of Chawton and its inhabitants and visitors. Some readers may remember that I visited the house in Chawton some years ago, and was incredibly moved by being in the very house where Austen lived and wrote a large portion of her works. The second book is a collection of short stories titled “Jane Austen Made Me Do It: Original Stories Inspired by Literature’s Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart” (Ballantine, 2011), edited by Laurel Ann Nattress. The stories are all connected to Austen in various remarkably creative and intriguing ways. There are love stories, satires, ghost stories, and many other genres. I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy this collection, but, although the book is not as compelling as "The Jane Austen Society," I definitely did enjoy it.

"Queenie," by Candice Carty-Williams

The British novel “Queenie” (Simon & Schuster/Scout Press, paperback version 2019), which takes place in contemporary London, has been termed “Black Bridget Jones meets Americanah,” and that gives readers a very rough idea of the book. But the “Bridget Jones” books seemed much more lighthearted than this book; even the wonderful novel “Americanah,” although it focuses on racial analysis regarding the United States, has more of a wry, satirical tone in its observations than “Queenie” does. Queenie, the character, attempts to be a modern, free-spirited young woman, and there is certainly plenty of sex and drink and some drugs involved. But there is much pain as well. Some of the pain comes from a kind of depression that hangs over Queenie, getting worse as the novel progresses (although – spoiler alert – there is a cautiously optimistic ending to the novel). And some comes from being broken up with by a boyfriend. But some of that pain and depression comes from racial prejudice and discrimination, some of it internalized. So the book is a slightly uneasy mixture of “young and free woman in the city” (there is even a slight “Sex in the City” vibe as Queenie and her three best friends often meet and share their experiences about life, men, sex, work, and more) and of commentary on racial (and gender as well) matters. I like the portrayals of Queenie’s friends and how supportive and loving they are, as are some family members. Even her boss tolerates a lot of flakiness on Queenie’s part (some of it brought on by her troubles). The format of the book includes frequent series of tweets among the friends, which gives the book a contemporary vibe. At times the various aspects of the novel don’t quite fit together, but the result is still a compelling read.

"Home Baked," by Alia Volz

“Home Baked” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), by Alia Volz, is a combination of biography, memoir, San Francisco history, social commentary, political advocacy, and -- at times --humorous romp. Volz tells the story of her mother’s career baking and selling marijuana brownies in San Francisco, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. Volz’s mother Meridy was a “good girl,” a “square,” at college in Wisconsin before she moved to San Francisco for adventure and freedom, and stumbled upon the opportunity to bake and sell these special treats; her venture was called Sticky Fingers Brownies. She would dress in hippie-type clothing and make her rounds in various San Francisco neighborhoods, selling to regular customers and others. Her friends and later her husband helped in the enterprise, with the procuring of the marijuana, the baking, and the selling. Meridy was fearless, and somehow avoided getting into serious trouble during those years. She often made decisions based on the I Ching. Alia grew up with this, and always felt loved and safe, enjoying the adventures her mother took her along on. The book portrays the atmosphere, spirit and feeling of San Francisco during the 70s. Later, as AIDS became the scourge of the city, Meridy provided her brownies to many who suffered from that disease, easing their symptoms such as pain, nausea, and lack of appetite. Alia also conveys the horrors and sadness of that disease and its destruction of huge numbers of the young people, mostly but not only gay, and their diverse, creative community. She also shows the underside of San Francisco’s freedom and reputation: she tells of the Jim Jones devastation in Guyana, and of the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor – the first openly gay Supervisor – Harvey Milk. As an adult writer, in preparation for writing this book, Volz did extensive research and many interviews, including of her mother and her father, and she has created a book full of descriptions and details of that unique time in a unique city. She has done something that seems difficult to me for a child to do: try to give an honest, accurate portrayal of her parents, their strengths and weaknesses, their eccentricities, and their (Meridy’s and Doug’s) initially close but later troubled relationship with each other (leading to divorce, but in later life to a friendship again). (Parenthetically, I have lived in San Francisco since those days, and I treasure the descriptions in this book of times and events that are very familiar to me, although my life and career have obviously been quite different than those of Meridy.)