Book Review: Passing

[osprey_archer]

I meant to read Nella Larsen’s Passing slowly so as to discuss it with asakiyume, but once I started reading I grew so absorbed that I accidentally devoured the book in a morning. In my defense it is very short. The book grabs you by the throat from the very first page, when Irene receives a letter from an old childhood friend: Clare, who is now passing for white.

Although Clare is married to a deeply racist man, which makes any connection with her old life fraught with danger, she yearns to be among Black people again… at least on an occasional basis. Irene remains embedded in the Black community, but, light-skinned herself, she occasionally takes advantage of her ability to pass to use white-only facilities - which is how she runs into Clare, after not seeing her for over a decade: both women are drinking iced tea in a rooftop hotel restaurant in Chicago.

Irene is scornful of Clare’s choice to pass permanently, but she can’t help admiring the moxie it takes to do it… as well as Clare’s sensational, magnetic beauty, on which Irene comments every time that she sees her, which generally happens after Irene has sworn that she will never see Clare again and then goes to see her anyway, because Irene just can’t seem to resist her.

When I bought the book, the used bookstore clerk commented, “I’ve heard really toned down the sapphic overtones in the movie.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment, but I intend to report back once I do.



This is a point of personal preference rather than a literary criticism, but I did sigh resignedly when, inevitably, the book developed into a love triangle between Irene, Clare, and Irene’s husband. My feeling (which may not be what Larsen meant me to feel, but it is a door she left open) is that the love triangle actually exists only in Irene’s head, and she’s projecting her own magnetic attraction onto her husband: “Of course he can’t resist her! No one could!” But this makes less difference than you might expect in the Love Triangle Reading Experience (™).



On the whole, though, an excellent book. Larsen milks the premise for both drama and sociological insight, and it's a pleasure to see a premise so absolutely wrung dry.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I sent you a bunch of thoughts by email, so here I'll just say--at least for starters--that I very much enjoyed the book too. Irene strikes me as a *very* un-self-aware person (who thinks that she is self-aware), and yes, all that about her husband could well have been completely in her head--but the lengths she lets it take her to reveal her unresolvable ambivalence toward Clare (it seems to me).

I thought Irene's state by the end was a beautifully portrayed example of severe depression, though it probably didn't go by that name at the time.

[luzula]

It's been a long time since I read this (or actually listened to this very good audiobook), but yeah, I do remember the clear f/f content!