Did you catch Editor, Angela and Production Ed, Judey, discussing Burns, his poetry and his legacy on Facebook Live? It makes interesting listening – did you know the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum is the second-most-visited writer’s museum in the UK (after Shakespeare’s)?
One of his poems mentioned in the broadcast is “To A Louse”, which features the lines:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
And it occurred to me that’s what’s at the heart of “The Vanishing Half”, by Brit Bennett — how others see us, and also how we see ourselves.