Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez

Monday, July 4, 2022--San Antonio

Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez was an interesting story incorporating generations of the same family (that originated from slaves in Jamaica and immigrated to England) with the central characters being Jehovah's Witnesses.  It dealt with topics such as the love that some of the church members have for their religion and the door-to-door witnessing that is so important to it, for being appreciated by the church elders, and with banning and shunning that are used within the religion (not just from/by the church but also from continued association with their family members) who they find has not lived up to their standards.  Much of the novel is built around the life of one of those members who runs away to London at age 17 after being exposed for his sexual orientation and expelled from his fast track of being a leader within the church.  In London, he finds it difficult to make a living, and becomes a male prostitute. Included are topics such as the young man's interest in clients who remind him in age and physical features of his step-father, his establishment of a "chosen" family, his search for the truth about his biological father, etc.  What spoiled the book for me was constant use of references to music.  It's obvious that the author has always loved music, has been the type of person who is always listening to music as he is out and about (like people have done over the years with the Walkman, the iPod, and smart phones today), who has an encyclopedic knowledge of songs and their singers over the decades, and feels it improves his story to have everything happening referenced in detail to the music of that time period and playing in the background.  Yuck!!  I felt I was reading a book written by an autistic nerd.  Without all the unnecessary (many, many often taking up more than a page at a time) music references, I would have rated the book 4 or 4 1/2, but with them, it dropped in my opinion to 3 stars out of 5.