Four hours had passed when my husband came back to check on me. “Are you alive?” he said.

I lifted my eyes from The Vanishing Half  by Brit Bennett only long enough to communicate, “I am.”

“Almost done?” he pressed.

“Give me 15 more minutes and we can go,” I said, buying myself enough time to finish the two last chapters.

The Vanishing Half  is an extraordinary read. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever picked up. The best-selling novel follows the journey of twin sisters Desiree and Stella after they’ve run away from their small Southern town. It’s 1968 and both sisters move to New Orleans, until their lives diverge. The novel covers decades of the twins’ lives, including both their daughters whose worlds also intertwine. This is an insightful book you will not be able to put down with captivating characters showing us a tale about family, identity, race and gender.

If that sounds like a tall order, it is. And yet Bennett manages to show you the nuances of each complicated theme in a way that is revealing and relatable. I found my awareness and understanding expanding and I could see little pieces of myself in these characters. Sisterhood is complicated, twins or not, and Bennett captured some of the most loving, spiteful and ultimately mirroring qualities of growing up with a sister. She does the same for the mother-daughter relationship, which tends to be complex for most people. As women, we love our mothers, and also they are flawed and perhaps there is no one as punishing on them as us, their own daughters.

Although these themes feel heavy, The Vanishing Half  is not that. Actually, the weighty subjects are shown to you in a story that’s interesting. You want to follow these characters. With each morsel of their lives revealed, you long to know more. The novel spanned decades and yet I wanted decades more.

It’s a relevant read for today that grounds us in the very real experiences of inequality and racism in this country. It doesn’t do so in a preachy way, actually, it’s scary how normal it seems, like any other understanding in these characters’ lives, akin to gravity. It’s just there and it works that way and we don’t know why but we accept it.

I can go on and on about why this book should be everyone’s August Book Club pick, but I will let you discover this world on your own. I felt grateful, inspired, saddened, entertained and very much awake. When I read a book like this I am reminded of the power of art. A story can expand our awareness, understanding, empathy and compassion… which in turn can have a ripple effect that makes the world a better place. Bennett has done that with this book.

Have you read The Vanishing Half? Tell me your thoughts. I’d love to hear them…