This was an interesting and thought-provoking book. I had some expectations, partly based on incomplete information…I had seen remarks comparing it to Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, so I thought it might be a real challenge for me (since I’ve been in less than perfect health and under treatment, I feel like my brain doesn’t work as well so complexity is hard for me). But just a glance at the reviews on Amazon showing stars in the 5 range made me eager to get reading, so I jumped right on it when Penguin/Riverhead and NetGalley provided a copy in exchange for my honest review. 

The book is about identical twin girls who run away from home at age 16, and follows their lives from the 1950s to the 1990s. They are “the Vignes twins,” Desiree and Stella, who grew up in Mallard, a town described as a place “…for men like him, who would never be accepted as whie but refused to be treated like Negroes.” The town was populated by light-skinned African-Americans and has been very hard on their family. Their father “had been so light…but none of that mattered when the white men came for him.” After their mother tells them they have to leave school and go to work to help support the family, they leave, going first to New Orleans, until Stella disappeared. Desiree goes off, marries a VERY dark man and has a very dark daughter named Jude who she brings with her when she comes back home to escape an abusive marriage. Stella, in the meantime, passes for white and goes off to live in California, where she too has a daughter, who is something of a classic spoiled LA brat. 

The story is told in chapters that focus on Desiree, Stella, Desiree’s daughter Jude, and Stella’s daughter (the spoiled one whose name I can’t remember), with lots of detail about their families, their communities, and their racial identities. I loved all that, and was fine until (as the publisher’s blurb asks, “What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?” It’s that intersecting storyline thing that derailed it for me. I’m not sure how it might have gone otherwise, and I didn’t expect the level of involvement that happened between the daughters. I think I was just too entranced with Stella and Desiree, and didn’t really care enough about the daughters…but in any case, I think it will be a good pick for book clubs, as it explores so much in terms of family, trust/honesty, gender/sexuality, and race relations. Maybe too many topics in the second generation? Her writing is terrific, but for me there were just too many issues and convenient intersections between the twins’ two daughters. Three stars.