This beautifully written slim story could just as easily have been called ‘Rules for Passing,’ and it might have had a happier ending. Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance classic traces a year in the renewed friendship of childhood friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendra Bellew. They become reacquainted by accident in a Chicago restaurant where both are passing as white women; they discovered that for Clare passing is a way of life—her racist husband doesn’t even know her true heritage—and for Irene it is an occasional convenience. The two could not be more different in other ways as well: Irene is controlling and proper, and the author intimates that only her dark husband and son stop her from passing “over” to Clare’s style of duplicity. Clare is vivacious, elegant, and sexual, sides of herself she rediscovers when she attaches herself to Irene and her husband Brian’s Black social life in Harlem, while her white husband travels on business. ‘Passing’ outlines the many rules for convincing others that one is *not* African American, and the many ways one could be tripped up. Clare especially exemplifies a kind of existential loneliness that comes from cutting oneself off from community, heritage, and culture. Her end is tragic, but Irene’s fate is also complicated by her understanding of the depth of her own lack of honesty and authenticity. Glad I finally read this one; it’s been on my shelf for years.