Hey, guys, sorry for not posting in a while, I finished Passing a while back but was wrapped up in my summer travels and couldn’t find the time to write this review. I have another review coming shortly, as well as a summer review post. Also, hold tf up, cause about two hours ago, Tay announced The Eras Tour movie, and my sanity has been unstable ever since!! I’m literally so excited and glad that all our clowning was not in vain. Plus, I think the movie was filmed on the night I attended TET (yeah, I got tickets back in December and sometimes my brain just goes !!!! from that night), so I’ll be famous *mwah*
Anyway, enough about that, I’ll include my summer Tay activity in the summer post coming soon. For now, let’s talk about Passing, besties. To be honest, this book was not my absolute favorite. I liked it well enough, and there were certain parts that were gorgeous and just touched my nerves, but all in all, I wouldn’t say it was my favorite summer read—I’d say that was Emma (it just got me, y’know, and was a happy place).
I read Passing about a month ago, and I liked that it was a shorter read (around 150 pages), and the story was great. I actually watched the movie (I didn’t know it was a book too, don’t kill me!) before I read it, and found that I like the movie better now than the book. It was beautifully done.
Wait, I’m like 100% getting ahead of myself—let me back up and give y’all an overview of the book. So, Passing is set in the 1920s/30s and focuses on a woman called Irene Redfield. We meet Irene as a middle-aged woman, married, and with two kids, though none of that is the center of the story. No, the story centers around the melting of something in Irene’s past—an old friendship unexpectedly rekindled and the dangerous implications of it. Irene unexpectedly reunites with her childhood friend Claire, who is “passing” for white. “Passing” was one of the aspects of the book that really drew me in, and it’s explained in the book as being relatively common for lighter-skinned black people. Both Irene and Claire are light-skinned, though only Claire is “passing”—she’s married to a racist white man. The book follows Irene’s feelings as she and Claire grow acquainted again after all these years, and how different the two women are.
Some things I liked about the book: 1. The concept of “passing,” as I stated above. I read The Vanishing Half a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It was the first introduction I had to passing, and I was fascinated by it. So, that was one of the reasons that compelled me to pick up Passing, though I was a bit disappointed by the lack of content on passing itself. The story focuses more on who the two women are themselves, not exactly the implications of their differing races, though that does play an important role in the end…
2. Claire’s husband. This wasn’t exactly something I liked, but it did create a feeling of fear I’ve never come across in a book. Books don’t usually make me feel afraid, but this character certainly struck that in me. Just wait ’til you read it and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Irene’s emotional reaction to meeting him = intense.
So, yeah, like I said, this book wasn’t especially jaw-dropping to me and didn’t strike an intense emotional cord in me, though I could tell that was what it intended (especially the raw ending). But, no flack to Larsen, I didn’t feel those intended emotions. I liked those certain parts, and I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t rank it as a favorite.
Age: 12+
Genre: Historical fiction
Rating: 5/10