416 pages
French language
Published Sept. 25, 2021 by J'ai Lu.
Quatorze ans après la disparition des jumelles Vignes, l’une d’elles réapparaît à Mallard, leur ville natale, dans le sud d’une Amérique fraîchement déségrégationnée. Adolescentes, elles avaient fugué main dans la main, décidées à affronter le monde.
Pourtant, lorsque Desiree refait surface, elle a perdu la trace de sa jumelle depuis bien longtemps : Stella a disparu des années auparavant pour mener à Boston la vie d’une jeune femme blanche. Mais jusqu’où peut-on renoncer à une partie de soi-même ?
Dans ce roman magistral, l’auteure explore les méandres de l’identité, de la filiation à la volonté d’être maître de son destin, en passant par le besoin dévorant de trouver sa place.
The book was engaging and the characters (mostly) well-developed. I felt that Part 5 dragged, though, which is one reason I couldn't give it five stars. I think the book should have ended sooner.
The narration was brilliant.
Start with two very light skinned African American twin girls from a small town in Louisiana, a father killed in a lynching, a very dark skinned African American man who works for the FBI in the time of J. Edgar Hoover, a bounty hunter, the Yale educated son of a wealthy banker, an aspiring actress trying to find herself, a young African American woman from a poor family going to medical school, a transgender African American male, transvestites seeing their friends die during the early days of AIDS.
Add masterful writing and mix well. You end up with a compelling novel that will challenge how you think about the people you encounter. What are the stories of the people around you? How can you learn from being part of a more complicated diverse world.
Read this book.
I know this is wildly popular. It just didn't do it for me. The book is too long to have insufficiently developed characters and very little story movement.
This was a lovely story about family, love, and the consequences we face when we choose to reject our born identities. Would recommend.
