JESUS BOY by Preston L. Allen

Akashic Books, 250 pages, trade paperback, $15.95

During the weeks I was reading Jesus Boy a lot of people asked me if I was reading the Bible. I had to explain that the author chose to make the book look like a Bible for some perverse reason, and that I would never voluntarily read the Bible. Once I indicated the title on the front was “Jesus Boy” and not the “Holy Bible,” the curious party would respond, “Oh, what’s it about?”

This is the part of conversation I liked: “It’s about a 16-year-old boy’s affair with a 42-year-old widow.” At that point, people would usually say something like, “What the hell?” or, “Good luck with that, creep.”

When given a small description like that, it’s hard to imagine how a story can develop into such an abnormal situation. Allow me to explain in full:

Elwyn Parker is a boy who grows up in an incredibly religious African-American community in Miami, Florida. His family attends the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters, where Elwyn has played the piano every Sunday since his youth. After learning that his childhood crush, Peachie, is pregnant and soon to marry someone else in the congregation, Elwyn goes to comfort the recently widowed Sister Morrisohn to get his mind off Peachie. Out of emotional confusion and desperation, he finds himself kissing Sister Morrisohn and is forced to pray for forgiveness after. Following the incident, Elwyn devotes his life to serving God’s will, starting with playing piano for all major church events, regularly fasting and making Jesus clubs at school. Despite the change in his life, Elwyn feels crushed by the world when his grades drop because of his constant evangelism, and furthermore when Peachie gets married. Elwyn feels the only solution is to go back to Sister Morrisohn’s and confess once again. Only this time, he finds himself in her bed, naked.

And so it begins. The story moves through about 12 years of Elwyn’s life, from high school to college to the crummy jobs afterward. I’m not going to give away too much of the story; I’m just going to say that near the end, Elwyn finds out that even those who seem the most holy have bastard children hiding in their closets.

Preston L. Allen has a unique style of writing. He changes the narrative point of view throughout the book; in the first two chapters, the story is told in first person through Elwyn’s perspective; it then changes to a third-person narrative following Peachie. The chapter after that switches back to Elwyn and Sister Morrisohn, but still in third-person. And that’s only the first part of the book — the story also goes back several decades to follow Elwyn’s grandmother, and at one point the story is told by Elwyn’s long-lost half-brother to show what people would think of Elwyn when they first meet him. When a chapter starts, it’s hard to figure out who’s narrating or who the narrative is following until a name is revealed. It made the reading experience mysterious and gripping.

I didn’t like that vulgar words (like “shit,” “cunt,” “fuck,” and “ass”) were censored; it felt I was getting a doctored version of the real thing. The sex parts were at times briefly summed up (like “they made love”); other times, they were graphic and fully detailed, from the removal of every piece of clothing to the lighting of the cigarette after.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Jesus Boy, mainly because I was raised in a Christian family, so I understood many aspects like Bible quoting, division among branches, regular church attendance, and falling out of faith. Reading a book like this makes me wonder if Allen is a Christian and chose to write a book to show that only God is perfect, or if he’s attacking Christianity. All I know is that he too has a good understanding of church-life. I liked how he put Leviticus 18 on trial, the infamous chapter in the Bible that speaks against incest, bestiality, and homosexuality; the debate is left to the discretion of the reader.

I highly recommend reading Jesus Boy if you’re looking for a book that’s unusual but still realistic. I look forward to reading more from Preston L. Allen and I’m predicting to hear more praise for his writing.