BOOKS: EDMUND WHITE, PAUL MENDEZ, MORE.

By Paul Mendez

The music of R&B acts like Destiny’s Child, Sugababes, Aaliyah and Mis-Teeq is interwoven through this, Paul Mendez’ highlyacclaimed debut.

It brings a joyful musicality to this semiautobiographical novel, which follows 19-yearold Jesse McCarthy who escapes his Jehovah’s Witness family in the west-Midlands of England for a fresh start in London.

Struggling with loneliness, facing racist micro-aggressions in public, and eroticisation on the gay scene, Jesse turns to sex work until an injury makes him reconsider his life path.

From one older man to another, he struggles with a lingering sense of loss until he meets Owen Gunning, a Cambridge-educated divorcee who introduces him not only to the literary world but also new notions of love. Together, they embark on an intellectual and erotic journey, exploring how selfhood is continuously reinvented to make sense of our past and present.

In this journey of self-discovery, the interracial relationships between Jesse and his “white daddies” invites readers to see how sexuality, racial identity, and power relations are entangled, shaping the contours of our desires for intimacy and attachment.

Mendez captures the dynamics of the times and the book brims with steamy sex scenes. A more careful structuring of the plot may have made the storyline more focused, but Rainbow Milk offers many tender moments that will touch readers hearts. It has been selected as an Observer 2020 Top 10 Debut and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. – Hendri