A new novel explores the construct of race in the diverging lives of light-skinned black twins, one of whom transitions into a life as a white woman.

“The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett is beautifully written, thought-provoking and immersive. It follows Desiree and Stella, who hail from the town of Mallard, imagined by its founder as a place for people like him.

“Lightness, like anything inherited at a great cost, was a lonely gift,” Bennett writes in an example of the profound wisdoms woven throughout the book.

The older, wilder twin Desiree has little patience for the townspeople’s obsession with lightness. “Her father had been so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn his arm over to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him, so how could she care about lightness after that?”

Even as Stella, the twin who transitions after leaving Mallard, sheds some of the burdens of being seen as black, she gets in its place the psychological toll of passing as white, of lying to those closest to her.

“At first, passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it,” Bennett writes. “But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become someone else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.”

Issues of privilege, inter-generational trauma, the randomness and unfairness of it all, are teased apart in all their complexity, within a story that also touches on universal themes of love, identity and belonging.

“The Vanishing Half,” with its clever premise and strongly developed characters, is unputdownable and highly recommended.

•••

“Thin Girls”

Dark, poignant and gripping, Diana Clarke’s “Thin Girls” is sure to be unlike anything else you’ve read.

Identical twins Rose and Lily Winters are deeply connected, but in high school their relationship begins to grow complicated. Rose’s desperation to be cool leads her down a dangerous path of extreme dieting. Meanwhile, as if to compensate for Rose’s weight loss, Lily begins eating and eating and eating.

Both girls struggle with body and mental health issues well into adulthood. When we meet them, Rose is living in an anorexia rehabilitation facility and Lily has found herself in an abusive relationship, addicted to a new and dangerous fad diet, and in complete denial that anything in her life needs to change.

Alternating between flashbacks and the present day, “Thin Girls” is a captivating story of the Winters twins’ road to recovery as they work to help each other through issues of body image, love, identity and sexuality.

Clarke succeeds at creating a story that feels wholly unique while at the same time wholly relatable for young women who endure so many of the challenges Rose and Lily face.

With the book’s shadowy tone, Clarke has fashioned a world that feels almost dystopian, yet its power lies in the fact that Rose and Lily’s experiences are all too common and all too real.