As one of the small percentage of Caucasians that is lactose intolerant, and the son of a woman herself obsessed with the evils of milk drinking, I was prepared for the idea that products of the dairy industry were part of vast conspiracy to control our minds.
I wasn’t ready for the idea that the conspiracy was controlled by aliens from the planet Vega.
This is the bizarre milieu of Andrew Thomas Breslin’s Mother’s Milk. The story follows a young, barely-employed lawyer, Cindy Kicklklug, working for a group of radical nutritionists known as the True Foods Project; one of their members – a mathematician who, like Cindy is no crusader, is only working for the group “for the maths” – finds a way to prove that milk is the cause of numerous diseases, general gassiness, and oh, yeah, mind control. Things get a little out of hand after that.
Breslin’s book is creamed with wit and it milks science, the law, and etymology to good effect. The only way the book goes off is its tendency to repeat things a wee bit (we are told many times that the product of one animal, the cow, is given an entire food group, which I agree, is suspicious, but I got the point after the first few times.) A minor curdling.
In addition to lashings of “milk thugs” and pails of black helicopters, the book also features, a kidnapped cow, a telepathic dolphin, and a cast of characters that spoof the lobbying industry with humor and great wit.
Recommended! And available directly from the publisher.