Rainbow Milk
A Novel
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3.9 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Nominated for a 34th annual Lambda Literary Award • An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.
"The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for." —Marlon James
In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country.
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality.
A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mendez dazzles with his debut, an explosive bildungsroman drawing on the legacy of Britain's Windrush generation of 1950s migrants from the West Indies. Blind boxer turned expert gardener Norman Alonso details his history in a ravishing patois as he arrives from Jamaica to the coal town of Blixton in 1956 along with his housekeeper wife, Claudette, and their two children. Norman's hope for a fresh life dissolves into despair as he confronts racism (someone paints "KBW" on their door, for Keep Britain White) and shame over the difficulty in providing for his family ("Depression gwine guh kill me dead," he exclaims in an interior monologue). Mendez then moves 50 years forward to Alonso's gay grandson, 19-year-old Jesse McCarthy, an aspiring writer who was "disfellowshipped" from his Jehovah's Witness family after seeking a more vibrant and free life in London. He cruises public bathrooms, bars, and discos before becoming a rent boy and then (influenced by James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room) develops a relationship with an older white man. After discovering a shocking revelation from his past, Jesse moves toward a promising future. Mendez has a full bag of tricks and a sprawling range, deploying biting social commentary; unflinching, intense sex scenes; and exquisite prose, making his work alternately reminiscent of Bernadine Evaristo, Garth Greenwell, Zadie Smith, and Alan Hollinghurst. Readers will be hard put to find a more inspired voice.
