The Vanishing Half is a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. It is a novel about how identity is constructed. The central focus of The Vanishing Half is racial identity. It is about the Vignes sisters, identical twins Desiree and Stella, one of whom lives as a black woman while the other lives as a white woman and follows their lives through the decades spanning the 1950s to the early 1990s.
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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to get sucked into a Charles Manson-esque cult? The Girls by Emma Cline is a not so subtle riff on Charles Manson and his “family”, down to the horrific murders that Manson urged his followers to commit. In this novel the infamous cult leader’s name is Russell, but he is physical described like Manson, he plays guitar like Manson and he is even friends with a famous musician so that he can get a record deal like Manson. However, this novel is really about Evie Boyd.
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I first became aware of The Song of Achilles when I read Miller’s other book Circe (published after The Song of Achilles. I also highly recommend you read it), then I started to notice it pop up on lists of must-read books. If you have any interest in Greek mythology or tragic love stories, I highly recommend this book. I only know the bare bones about Greek mythology myself; before reading this novel, my knowledge of Achilles was limited to him being a great hero with a weak heel. The Song of Achilles tells the story of Achilles through the perspective of Achilles’ great love, Patroclus. Miller based her novel on Homer’s the Iliad, where Achilles is a strong fighter and difficult to kill (but doesn’t have a vulnerable heel) but she diverges from the Illiad by writing the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus as a romantic one.
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