What kind of book is Rainbow Black supposed to be?
I speculate here because I finished it three days ago and still don’t know the answer or how I fully feel about it beyond, “I really liked it, loved it in some parts, wish I was moved by others.” It’s such a rigidly unsentimental book from beginning-to-end and I’m not sure if that’s what made me dock it or not because the writing here is so good.
The book starts off with a bang. I was enthralled by Lacey’s story and how she has to navigate a horrid stateside bureaucracy that is persecuting her and her family in the wake of the Satanic Panic. Not putting the book down was an understatement, I was physically angry when I had to. And yet, midway through that first part, it loses the thread a little, draws out certain angles too much and then doesn’t handle the transition well between part one and part two.
That got part two started off on the wrong foot for me in which I couldn’t fully buy the book’s central relationship. But there are still a lot of dramatic and painful moments that work. The book zips and zags, sometimes in frustrating directions but Thrash never loses the energy to tell the story.
Reflecting on it a few days later, I think more than anything this book is a story about how the institutions that are supposed to serve us often let us down. And when they do, that causes irreparable harm. I suppose part of why I found the unsentimental nature of the story off-putting is because I wanted good things for Lacey for all she had been through. But Thrash takes a realistic view of the world and institutional overreach and it works.
So I’ll need more time to think, haha. But this isn’t what I expected, for better and for worse. It did give me a lot to think about in a good way. And it is very well-written.
