Starred review from March 29, 2021
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.
April 1, 2021
Troubled by religious traumas, a young gay Black man struggles to reconcile his racial and sexual identities. In the wake of 9/11, Jesse McCarthy is 19 and living in the British Midlands; his parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, have dissuaded him from pursuing academic study, encouraging him instead to devote himself to the church. His mother, who's first-generation Jamaican British, is depressed and blames Jesse for her travails; his stepfather is White and has mostly given up on attempting to nurture him. As tensions rise at home, Jesse--an active and beloved member of his church community--is summoned to speak with the preacher: Not only has he been caught drunk and high on marijuana, but he's been accused of making a homoerotic remark to his close friend. Disfellowshipped from the church and thrown out of his house, Jesse moves to London with all the money he's saved up from working at McDonald's. Independent of his family and faith, he's finally able to enjoy his sexual freedom. Eventually, after a brief and disastrous waiting gig, Jesse finds that he can support himself through sex work, though at an emotional cost. He yearns for the safety and comfort of a more permanent relationship. While compelling at times--especially when Jesse interrogates the nexus between his sexuality and Blackness--the novel sags with overwritten passages: long digressions into music, repetitive sex scenes, mundanities described in excessive detail. The pace drags, with key scenes lost in the midst of less significant ones. Structurally, the novel is confused and inconsistent. The events of the moving first section, about a Windrush generation Jamaican family immigrating to a brutally racist Britain in the early 1950s, don't figure into the novel until the final quarter, when narrative threads about Jesse's past are hastily (and messily) tied up. Moving at times but not well executed.
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May 1, 2021
British writer Mendez's first novel opens with the narration of Norman, a gardener from Jamaica, explaining in rich patois how he came to live in England's Black Country in the 1950s, father to two small children and unable to work due to near-blindness. The book's majority then belongs to Black teenager Jesse, who, at the dawn of the new millennium, finds himself disfellowshipped as a Jehovah's Witness, fleeing his family and his West Midlands home for London, where he can finally explore his sexuality. Before long, he is making a living as a gay sex worker. Mendez's sterling debut is an epic, by turns sexy and harrowing, a tale of shouldering ostracism, racism, poverty, and other dangers, and not only surviving but also finding joy, art, and love in the process. Skillfully hopping through decades, Mendez reveals Jesse's present and past--particularly his punishing home life and the religion he must unlearn--and then, near the book's end, returns to Norman's story in a surprising way. Stunningly forthright and emotionally evocative fiction from an exciting new voice.
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