I love to be wowed. And that's what Larsen's PASSING did for me, from the onset. From the quiet first scene of the protagonist reading a letter from a long-ago friend. To the second chapter that flashes back, enticing with "This is what Irene Redfield remembered." To the introduction of her friend Clare Kendry on a sweltering Chicago day and their shared history and divergent present-day lives. To the central theme of the book, 'passing.' These Black women live in 1920s Chicago and New York, with the ability to pass as white, though one chooses to make it her lifestyle (marrying a white man who doesn't know she's Black) and the other deeply entrenched in Harlem society. Their complicated friendship ebbing and flowing through the book, Irene's anxious thoughts flooding her decisions, Clare's cool confidence wavering every now and then, and Larsen's subtext fueling a fire under all of it.

Each sentence a passion.

When I began, there were echoes of my reading of SULA last year—a book I picked up because it was said to be similar to Ferrante's Neopolitan novels. And all three manage that which I love about these books about women's friendships: the fissures that come about, the ones that leave and the ones that stay, the rebel and the stickler to the rules, what each does when faced with a society that would rather ignore or harm them (in Ferrante, though, its about economic standing, not race). These stories always fascinate me for what I learn and what I feel. PASSING also manages a Rorschach ending—asking the reader "what do you see? what do you think happened?" All I know is I loved all 147 pages.