Passing, Nella Larsen
Passing, Nella Larsen
2 Rating(s)
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Passing

Author: Nella Larsen

Narrator: Robin Miles

Unabridged: 4 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/26/2011


Synopsis

Nella Larsen’s fascinating exploration of race and identity—the inspiration for the Netflix film directed by Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga.

Irene Redfield is a Black woman living an affluent, comfortable life with her husband and children in the thriving neighborhood of Harlem in the 1920s. When she reconnects with her childhood friend Clare Kendry, who is similarly lightskinned, Irene discovers that Clare has been passing
for a white woman after severing ties to her past—even hiding the truth from her racist husband.

Clare finds herself drawn to Irene’s sense of ease and security with her Black identity and longs for the community (and, increasingly, the woman) she lost.

Irene is both riveted and repulsed by Clare and her dangerous secret, as Clare begins to insert herself—and her deception—into every part of Irene’s stable existence. First published in 1929, Larsen’s brilliant examination of the various ways in which we all seek to “pass,” is as timely as ever.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lisa of Troy on January 19, 2024

Checking out the Netflix Book Club (Which is confusing because it is actually on YouTube)! Irene "Rene" is out doing some shopping for a birthday present when she becomes faint and slips into a taxi. The driver takes her to The Drayton, a hotel with a rooftop restaurant, to cool down. The rooftop is......more

Goodreads review by emma on March 21, 2022

Short classics are my passion. I love getting smarter in under 2 hours. Now I'm more intelligent and more pretentious and I had a good time getting there. Living the dream. That's enough of a review. Bottom line: Sometimes short and impressive is all a book has to be!! ----------------- reading books by B......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on April 23, 2017

I read this a few months ago now, and I drastically undervalued its brilliance. I’m writing an essay on racial encounter in the modernist movement for university, so I’ve been picking this book apart during my second and third readings of it. During the course of it, I’ve noticed something equally a......more

Goodreads review by Katie on February 06, 2023

Simply one of the best books ever written.......more