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Milkman
In this unnamed city, to be interesting is dangerous. Middle sister, our protagonist, is busy attempting to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes 'interesting'. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2018
About the author
Anna Burns
20 books1,030 followersAnna Burns (born 1962) is an Irish author. She was born in Belfast and moved to London in 1987. Her first novel, No Bones, is an account of a girl's life growing up in Belfast during the Troubles.
Awards:
Winner of the 2001 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
Shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize (No Bones)
Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize (Milkman)
National Book Critics Circle Award 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Winner of the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award (Milkman)
Awards:
Winner of the 2001 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
Shortlisted for the 2002 Orange Prize (No Bones)
Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize (Milkman)
National Book Critics Circle Award 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 Nominee (Milkman)
Winner of the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award (Milkman)
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March 2, 2023October 21st, 2018
Somebody gave me their copy of the Man Booker winner today because I'm down with 'flu. A nice surprise. And a surprise to find the colour pink dominating the cover. What had I thought? That it would be green? Or white? Or maybe orange?
No. Ignore the orange. That must be the fever talking.
The pink-covered book looks unread and I worry about creasing the spine of said pink book but I crease it anyway, and quickly. I've wanted to read Pinkbook ever since I first heard about it, though I've not wanted to read it for all that time too, so Somebody sending it over was like my mind being made up for me by Somebody Else. Not that I like my mind being made up for me as a rule, though I don't like rules much either.
Ok. I need to sleep now.
October 22nd
I've discovered why Pinkbook is pink. It's because of the amazing ability of the sun to set gloriously even upon inglorious circumstances.
And I'm clearer about why I had that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling. It came from the suspicion that Pinkbook's narrator and I might be of a similar vintage. We are. One from 'over the border', the other from 'under the border', compassly speaking. One living in a no-go area 'over the road' from another no-go area, the other living in a come-and-go-as-you-please area alongside other come-and-go-as-you-please areas. One learning to tiptoe around unmentionables so that tomorrow might come, the other tramping on taboos like there was no tomorrow.
So there was guilt in that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling. Guilt that there were no no-go areas where eighteen-year-old-me lived, no taboo subjects I couldn't examine if I chose, no tribal groups making tribal rules, no white-van men making up my mind for me, no names I dared not name. And no father, mother, sisters, brothers, missing or dead. None of any of that, though I lived no great distance from Pinkbook's narrator in world terms. In world terms we were just across the road from each other.
October 23rd
I'm in a doctor's waiting room (primary viral infection becoming secondary bacterial infection), and as I take Pink-half-read-book out of my bag (essential reading-while-waiting therapy), I smile because a familiar song issues from the speaker system. It's a song Pinkbook's narrator might have hummed as she walked the dark end of her street. But she'd have had to hum it silently because the Van-man who wrote that song was from 'over the road', and the white-van-godfathers on the dark end of her street might not have approved. But me, when that song came out, I got to sing along wherever I chose, belting it out happily with friends at parties, never dwelling long on the dark end of the street, always crossing confidently towards the bright side of the road.
When the song ends, I flatten Pinkbook out heedless of creases, position my fingers to hold it at the best angle, and pick up this troubled, fractured, painful-but-funny story where it left off. Soon I come to the bit about narrator's 'jamais-vu' moments. It seems that along with the odd-in-her-community habit of reading-while-walking, she had the habit of wiping certain happenings from her memory completely. Although it must be said that her subconscious made unexpected choices about what to 'jamais-vu'. Why dot.dot.dot and not dash—dash—dash, I wonder, as my name is called...
I walk out of the surgery twenty minutes later with a prescription—and with two of my fingers in a splint. It seems I've damaged the extensor tendon of the fourth finger of my left hand. I have no memory of how or when it happened.
Jamais-vu? Jamais-déjà-vu? Déjà-jamais-vu?
I walk home, not-reading-while-walking. I need no further reading injuries.
October 24th
I'm galloping through Pinkbook. Pinkbook is fast becoming Nearly-read-book—until narrator puts a halt to my gallop. On the innocent turn of a relatively-innocent-seeming page, I stumble upon a purply-red passage:
‘Roasted beetroot and Roma tomatoes’, ‘Celebration red cabbage in port and red wine’, ‘Platter of edible red with further red and splashes of more red with extra startling red splatters to follow...’.
There's a butcher's knife in this passage.
Where is 'jamais-vu' when you need it.
Later
Ok, Nearly-read-book, I say stubbornly, this is it. I've fortified myself with strong coffee so that I can finish you off in one go. I will do this.
I flatten Pinkbook out for the final time, position some of my fingers to hold it at the best angle, and give this troubled-fractured-painful-but-contumaciously-hilarious story all I've got.
It's worth it.
Somebody gave me their copy of the Man Booker winner today because I'm down with 'flu. A nice surprise. And a surprise to find the colour pink dominating the cover. What had I thought? That it would be green? Or white? Or maybe orange?
No. Ignore the orange. That must be the fever talking.
The pink-covered book looks unread and I worry about creasing the spine of said pink book but I crease it anyway, and quickly. I've wanted to read Pinkbook ever since I first heard about it, though I've not wanted to read it for all that time too, so Somebody sending it over was like my mind being made up for me by Somebody Else. Not that I like my mind being made up for me as a rule, though I don't like rules much either.
Ok. I need to sleep now.
October 22nd
I've discovered why Pinkbook is pink. It's because of the amazing ability of the sun to set gloriously even upon inglorious circumstances.
And I'm clearer about why I had that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling. It came from the suspicion that Pinkbook's narrator and I might be of a similar vintage. We are. One from 'over the border', the other from 'under the border', compassly speaking. One living in a no-go area 'over the road' from another no-go area, the other living in a come-and-go-as-you-please area alongside other come-and-go-as-you-please areas. One learning to tiptoe around unmentionables so that tomorrow might come, the other tramping on taboos like there was no tomorrow.
So there was guilt in that not-wanting-to-read-it feeling. Guilt that there were no no-go areas where eighteen-year-old-me lived, no taboo subjects I couldn't examine if I chose, no tribal groups making tribal rules, no white-van men making up my mind for me, no names I dared not name. And no father, mother, sisters, brothers, missing or dead. None of any of that, though I lived no great distance from Pinkbook's narrator in world terms. In world terms we were just across the road from each other.
October 23rd
I'm in a doctor's waiting room (primary viral infection becoming secondary bacterial infection), and as I take Pink-half-read-book out of my bag (essential reading-while-waiting therapy), I smile because a familiar song issues from the speaker system. It's a song Pinkbook's narrator might have hummed as she walked the dark end of her street. But she'd have had to hum it silently because the Van-man who wrote that song was from 'over the road', and the white-van-godfathers on the dark end of her street might not have approved. But me, when that song came out, I got to sing along wherever I chose, belting it out happily with friends at parties, never dwelling long on the dark end of the street, always crossing confidently towards the bright side of the road.
When the song ends, I flatten Pinkbook out heedless of creases, position my fingers to hold it at the best angle, and pick up this troubled, fractured, painful-but-funny story where it left off. Soon I come to the bit about narrator's 'jamais-vu' moments. It seems that along with the odd-in-her-community habit of reading-while-walking, she had the habit of wiping certain happenings from her memory completely. Although it must be said that her subconscious made unexpected choices about what to 'jamais-vu'. Why dot.dot.dot and not dash—dash—dash, I wonder, as my name is called...
I walk out of the surgery twenty minutes later with a prescription—and with two of my fingers in a splint. It seems I've damaged the extensor tendon of the fourth finger of my left hand. I have no memory of how or when it happened.
Jamais-vu? Jamais-déjà-vu? Déjà-jamais-vu?
I walk home, not-reading-while-walking. I need no further reading injuries.
October 24th
I'm galloping through Pinkbook. Pinkbook is fast becoming Nearly-read-book—until narrator puts a halt to my gallop. On the innocent turn of a relatively-innocent-seeming page, I stumble upon a purply-red passage:
‘Roasted beetroot and Roma tomatoes’, ‘Celebration red cabbage in port and red wine’, ‘Platter of edible red with further red and splashes of more red with extra startling red splatters to follow...’.
There's a butcher's knife in this passage.
Where is 'jamais-vu' when you need it.
Later
Ok, Nearly-read-book, I say stubbornly, this is it. I've fortified myself with strong coffee so that I can finish you off in one go. I will do this.
I flatten Pinkbook out for the final time, position some of my fingers to hold it at the best angle, and give this troubled-fractured-painful-but-contumaciously-hilarious story all I've got.
It's worth it.
February 8, 2023
Well, that was...unpleasant! I usually can read a 352 page novel in two to three days... this took me a tortuous ten, as on several occasions I looked at the book and just had no interest in reading any of it. I was sorely tempted to DNF it, but as a Booker completest, I rallied myself to get through. I'm going to disappoint some by not giving this one of my infamous parodic takedown reviews, but I am going to have to pass, since this book not only sapped my creative juices, but at several points, my will to live.
Others have bizarrely mentioned how funny this is, but I can only assume they find cancer, boils, and diarrhea equally hilarious. The non-plot barely contains enough incidents to hang a very short story upon, and Burns' going on and on and on about virtually nothing... and then repeating herself once again for page after page after page with no paragraph breaks, made me think she must be getting paid by the word.
At page 180, I mentioned this was reminding me of Proust (whose magnum opus I spent 8 miserable months reading in 1981 - up until now probably my most distressing reading experience) - and NOT in a good way. And on p. 231, she indeed mentions dear Marcel, so I am assuming she was attempting to outdo him in loquacious nonsensical verbiage with no payoffs.
So 1/2 a star for my unmasking her nefarious scheme ... and another 1/2 star for the gorgeous cover.... it's going at the bottom of this year's Booker rankings (... at least 'Snap' had characters with more than a single dimension ... and a plot!).
PS...so, of course, as in 3 out of the past 5 years, my 13th ranked out of 13 from the Booker longlist has taken the prize... but at least in previous years I found SOMETHING to admire in those winners... this year? Zippo! Nada! Doo-dah! This may be one of the most boring, depressing, dispiriting books ever put to paper!
PPS: I am still puzzled/amused at the continued hoopla about this piece of shite by its myriad cult-like followers, who persist in clogging my feed day after day, all trying to outdo one another in their effusive encomiums. I have now coined a new term to describe such: 'Literary Circle Jerk'. Drink the Kool Aid, kiddos!
PPPS: So apparently this is the unkillable novel, having now also inexplicably won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And newly longlisted for the IMPAC (Dublin Literary Award)! I STILL won't concede that there is ANYTHING worthy in this mess, and would suggest that some horrid mass hypnosis is sweeping the book awards.
Others have bizarrely mentioned how funny this is, but I can only assume they find cancer, boils, and diarrhea equally hilarious. The non-plot barely contains enough incidents to hang a very short story upon, and Burns' going on and on and on about virtually nothing... and then repeating herself once again for page after page after page with no paragraph breaks, made me think she must be getting paid by the word.
At page 180, I mentioned this was reminding me of Proust (whose magnum opus I spent 8 miserable months reading in 1981 - up until now probably my most distressing reading experience) - and NOT in a good way. And on p. 231, she indeed mentions dear Marcel, so I am assuming she was attempting to outdo him in loquacious nonsensical verbiage with no payoffs.
So 1/2 a star for my unmasking her nefarious scheme ... and another 1/2 star for the gorgeous cover.... it's going at the bottom of this year's Booker rankings (... at least 'Snap' had characters with more than a single dimension ... and a plot!).
PS...so, of course, as in 3 out of the past 5 years, my 13th ranked out of 13 from the Booker longlist has taken the prize... but at least in previous years I found SOMETHING to admire in those winners... this year? Zippo! Nada! Doo-dah! This may be one of the most boring, depressing, dispiriting books ever put to paper!
PPS: I am still puzzled/amused at the continued hoopla about this piece of shite by its myriad cult-like followers, who persist in clogging my feed day after day, all trying to outdo one another in their effusive encomiums. I have now coined a new term to describe such: 'Literary Circle Jerk'. Drink the Kool Aid, kiddos!
PPPS: So apparently this is the unkillable novel, having now also inexplicably won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And newly longlisted for the IMPAC (Dublin Literary Award)! I STILL won't concede that there is ANYTHING worthy in this mess, and would suggest that some horrid mass hypnosis is sweeping the book awards.
November 10, 2020
Reread Nov 2020 for a group discussion in Reading the 20th Century, and just as impressive second time round
Deserved Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
This year's Man Booker longlist contains plenty of surprises, but I suspect that none will be more welcome than this one. I will try to keep this review fairly short, so for a more detailed one I recommend this one from Gumble's Yard: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The setting is based on Belfast at the height of the Troubles in the late '70s, but this is never explicitly stated, in fact very few proper names appear in this book. It is written in long dense paragraphs and very long chapters, which makes finding break points quite challenging, and it is a book that demands concentration.
The narrator recounts her experiences as an 18 year old, trying to steer a path through the minefield of gossip and political intrigues in Catholic Belfast - the author is old enough to remember these times and was brought up there.
The language and style is extraordinary and innovative. Rather than using names, characters are referenced using their place in the story. The Milkman of the title is an older and married "renouncer of the state" (i.e. a republican terrorist), who seems to be stalking the narrator, leading the community to believe that they are having an affair. This is not her only problem - she is also seen as a non-conformist just because she likes "reading-while-walking". Like many Catholics, the narrator comes from a large family, so brothers, sisters and brothers-in-law are given ordinals, other characters include the real milkman (a.k.a the man who doesn't love anybody), tablets girl, tablets girl's sister and "almost a year maybe-boyfriend". The mother is a powerful presence, and believes community rumours more than her own daughter, while brooding over her own poor choice of husband. Places and communities are also referred to indirectly, for example the "ten-minute area" (a derelict buffer zone), the "interface roads" and "the parks & reservoirs".
The language of control is another theme: "'She's fine, out and about' was the communal prognosis upon her, also the communal euphemism for 'mended though broken', itself another euphemism for 'in urgent need of medical care and attention', all of which the person in need unfortunately was not going to attend hospital to get."
It is interesting that Burns chose to write about this period now, given the current climate of social media surveillance and hate-driven politics, and the threats to Irish stability created by Brexit. NB After writing this review, I discovered that the book was mostly written more than 4 years before it was published, so well before the Brexit referendum, which makes it all the more prescient.
This may sound dark and claustrophobic, but the book also contains some very funny moments.
To finish, I can't resist a link to a song that covers some the same ground, the brilliant Religious Persuasion by Andy White.
Deserved Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2018
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
This year's Man Booker longlist contains plenty of surprises, but I suspect that none will be more welcome than this one. I will try to keep this review fairly short, so for a more detailed one I recommend this one from Gumble's Yard: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The setting is based on Belfast at the height of the Troubles in the late '70s, but this is never explicitly stated, in fact very few proper names appear in this book. It is written in long dense paragraphs and very long chapters, which makes finding break points quite challenging, and it is a book that demands concentration.
The narrator recounts her experiences as an 18 year old, trying to steer a path through the minefield of gossip and political intrigues in Catholic Belfast - the author is old enough to remember these times and was brought up there.
The language and style is extraordinary and innovative. Rather than using names, characters are referenced using their place in the story. The Milkman of the title is an older and married "renouncer of the state" (i.e. a republican terrorist), who seems to be stalking the narrator, leading the community to believe that they are having an affair. This is not her only problem - she is also seen as a non-conformist just because she likes "reading-while-walking". Like many Catholics, the narrator comes from a large family, so brothers, sisters and brothers-in-law are given ordinals, other characters include the real milkman (a.k.a the man who doesn't love anybody), tablets girl, tablets girl's sister and "almost a year maybe-boyfriend". The mother is a powerful presence, and believes community rumours more than her own daughter, while brooding over her own poor choice of husband. Places and communities are also referred to indirectly, for example the "ten-minute area" (a derelict buffer zone), the "interface roads" and "the parks & reservoirs".
The language of control is another theme: "'She's fine, out and about' was the communal prognosis upon her, also the communal euphemism for 'mended though broken', itself another euphemism for 'in urgent need of medical care and attention', all of which the person in need unfortunately was not going to attend hospital to get."
It is interesting that Burns chose to write about this period now, given the current climate of social media surveillance and hate-driven politics, and the threats to Irish stability created by Brexit. NB After writing this review, I discovered that the book was mostly written more than 4 years before it was published, so well before the Brexit referendum, which makes it all the more prescient.
This may sound dark and claustrophobic, but the book also contains some very funny moments.
To finish, I can't resist a link to a song that covers some the same ground, the brilliant Religious Persuasion by Andy White.
January 15, 2019
No no no no no!
As in hell no I didn’t finish it! I made it through a third of the book but I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was right up there with a root canal—maybe worse, because it required intense concentration. A fascinating book that sadly was unreadable for me.
I feel bad I’m bad-mouthing this book. First 60 pages, I was on my knees worshiping this author for being such a freakin’ genius. The sentences, oh the sentences: Unique, twisted, revealing, stunning. The writing was very stylized and I loved the style: Intricate, personal, clever, unusual, spot on (it’s very hard to describe the power of the writing). The first sentence of the book is killer good. And there was psychology, oh how I love psychology. I got yanked inside the author’s head, a hostage to her off-kilter way of thinking. Hot diggity! I was forced to let go of my way of looking at the world and I bought into hers. I did have to concentrate hard, but I didn’t care because I was enjoying myself so much. I can’t stress how much all of this was working. I held tight to her vision…until all the sudden the rubber band burst and the magic was gone. Kaput. The sentences that had seduced me now confused me and annoyed me. No connection anymore, zilch.
So what the hell happened? Too much politics, too much philosophy (which always makes my head spin). My theory is that the author indulged herself and wrote every single word that came into her head. She analyzed everything to death. This led to long paragraphs about ideas (sacrificing dialogue and plot), with many abstract thoughts and compound words, all in a row without room for a breath, plus a zillion commas. (Sort of like I’m doing here, oh god no!)
As I went from complaining to being pissed off, I realized that I would have loved this if it were a short story. I could have sustained that concentration for a shorter amount of time. To have to endure 300-plus pages of this thick pea soup, which became unpalatable to this pea brain, no way.
It was just too friggin’ dense and there were too many tangents. I had to reread and reread sentences until I had severe brain pain. This writer, she could take a spec on a wall and write a whole complicated treatise on it. Questions that kids think of, like why is the sky blue, actually launches the author into analyzing just that, in painful detail. (If I were a kid, I would run away to play in my sandbox.) Granted, it’s not a simple question but you don’t have to make it a Ph.D. thesis either. At first I was having a ball, such a cool subject, but as she droned on about it, I changed my tune.
I started realizing that I was dreading picking up this book and I thought: Root canal. This is like a root canal. But a root canal would be over sooner. Hey, I told myself, I can end this root canal this minute and simply stop reading. I can make it shorter than a root canal, damn straight I can! (Wouldn’t it be fun to walk out in the middle of a root canal—and suffer no consequences?) And thus I did what I seldom do, and especially with a book I was absolutely loving at first—I ditched it. This gave me both relief and distress. Was I just too stupid to understand it all? Were the sentences readable to my smart friends but too dense for my lesser brain? I decided it didn’t matter. I read for pleasure, and this had swerved into the torture category.
Oh, you probably want to know what this book is about. It’s told in first person by an 18-year-old girl in Belfast in the 1970s, during the time of war. No one has names, only nicknames. For example, she refers to her boyfriend as her “almost boyfriend.” There’s a stalker who she calls the milkman, and there’s another stalker named Somebody McSomebody, and a few other players who she refers to in funny ways. I thought the name thing was clever. The main character is the subject of gossip and she is criticized because she walks and reads. You really get the sense of war and the accompanying fear. Unfortunately, the author’s self-indulgent tangents take us away from the characters and the plot.
Oh, and a warning: There’s a dead animal scene that I could have done without. I don’t know why the author went there. Gross and upsetting.
This book won an award, it did indeed. I think the judges considered it great art but didn’t think about how it fared as literature—whether it was accessible, whether the plot and characters popped out like they should. Because I think it failed.
The final thought before I gave up: This thing will take me two months to read, and life is too short. So many books out there that will make me shiver. Get me the hell out of the dentist’s chair!
As in hell no I didn’t finish it! I made it through a third of the book but I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was right up there with a root canal—maybe worse, because it required intense concentration. A fascinating book that sadly was unreadable for me.
I feel bad I’m bad-mouthing this book. First 60 pages, I was on my knees worshiping this author for being such a freakin’ genius. The sentences, oh the sentences: Unique, twisted, revealing, stunning. The writing was very stylized and I loved the style: Intricate, personal, clever, unusual, spot on (it’s very hard to describe the power of the writing). The first sentence of the book is killer good. And there was psychology, oh how I love psychology. I got yanked inside the author’s head, a hostage to her off-kilter way of thinking. Hot diggity! I was forced to let go of my way of looking at the world and I bought into hers. I did have to concentrate hard, but I didn’t care because I was enjoying myself so much. I can’t stress how much all of this was working. I held tight to her vision…until all the sudden the rubber band burst and the magic was gone. Kaput. The sentences that had seduced me now confused me and annoyed me. No connection anymore, zilch.
So what the hell happened? Too much politics, too much philosophy (which always makes my head spin). My theory is that the author indulged herself and wrote every single word that came into her head. She analyzed everything to death. This led to long paragraphs about ideas (sacrificing dialogue and plot), with many abstract thoughts and compound words, all in a row without room for a breath, plus a zillion commas. (Sort of like I’m doing here, oh god no!)
As I went from complaining to being pissed off, I realized that I would have loved this if it were a short story. I could have sustained that concentration for a shorter amount of time. To have to endure 300-plus pages of this thick pea soup, which became unpalatable to this pea brain, no way.
It was just too friggin’ dense and there were too many tangents. I had to reread and reread sentences until I had severe brain pain. This writer, she could take a spec on a wall and write a whole complicated treatise on it. Questions that kids think of, like why is the sky blue, actually launches the author into analyzing just that, in painful detail. (If I were a kid, I would run away to play in my sandbox.) Granted, it’s not a simple question but you don’t have to make it a Ph.D. thesis either. At first I was having a ball, such a cool subject, but as she droned on about it, I changed my tune.
I started realizing that I was dreading picking up this book and I thought: Root canal. This is like a root canal. But a root canal would be over sooner. Hey, I told myself, I can end this root canal this minute and simply stop reading. I can make it shorter than a root canal, damn straight I can! (Wouldn’t it be fun to walk out in the middle of a root canal—and suffer no consequences?) And thus I did what I seldom do, and especially with a book I was absolutely loving at first—I ditched it. This gave me both relief and distress. Was I just too stupid to understand it all? Were the sentences readable to my smart friends but too dense for my lesser brain? I decided it didn’t matter. I read for pleasure, and this had swerved into the torture category.
Oh, you probably want to know what this book is about. It’s told in first person by an 18-year-old girl in Belfast in the 1970s, during the time of war. No one has names, only nicknames. For example, she refers to her boyfriend as her “almost boyfriend.” There’s a stalker who she calls the milkman, and there’s another stalker named Somebody McSomebody, and a few other players who she refers to in funny ways. I thought the name thing was clever. The main character is the subject of gossip and she is criticized because she walks and reads. You really get the sense of war and the accompanying fear. Unfortunately, the author’s self-indulgent tangents take us away from the characters and the plot.
Oh, and a warning: There’s a dead animal scene that I could have done without. I don’t know why the author went there. Gross and upsetting.
This book won an award, it did indeed. I think the judges considered it great art but didn’t think about how it fared as literature—whether it was accessible, whether the plot and characters popped out like they should. Because I think it failed.
The final thought before I gave up: This thing will take me two months to read, and life is too short. So many books out there that will make me shiver. Get me the hell out of the dentist’s chair!
September 10, 2023
This book won the Man Booker Prize in 2018. Its fame comes from the distinctive 'Voice of Middle Sister.' So it’s a 'voice' book that makes me think of others: the Scottish brogue of Swing Hammer Swing by Jeff Torrington or The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus.
The book has thousands of reviews on GR so I’ll go easy on the summary. You’ll probably like it - or you won’t. There is a dichotomy in the reviews with mostly 4’s and 5’s but many 1’s and 2’s and a lot of DNFs.
The 'Voice': this isn’t a quote but a list of vocabulary to give an example: “Ach aye yeah, middle sister, wee sisters, my maybe-boyfriend, his maybe-girlfriend, renouncers, the opposite religion, over-the-water, over the border, this side of the road, that side of the road, it’s not wee buns, ach aye no…”
Here’s an example of the voice from a passage where her mother talks to her about her deceased father. “She meant depressions, for da had had them: big, massive, scudding, whooping, black-cloud, infectious, crow, raven, jackdaw, coffin-upon-coffin, catacomb-upon-catacomb, skeletons-upon-skulls-upon-bones crawling along the ground to the grave type of depressions.”
There is very little back-and-forth dialog, but passages of conversation are included in the one paragraph per page structure.
The story is all centered on the euphemistically called 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland especially from the late 1960s through 1988. The author was born in 1962, so she lived in Belfast during most of this time and was ten at the time of peak violence, 1972. More than 3,500 people were killed in the violence from shootings and bombings, or shot by British soldiers or by paramilitary groups on each side – Catholic and Protestant – her 'opposite religions.' This is a huge number of deaths for a city the size of, say, Toledo, Ohio or Plymouth, UK.
Every family in the story is touched by the violence in some way, and in those days, Catholics had large families. In the main character’s family, she has had a brother shot and a brother-in-law killed by a car bomb. Another brother is on the run because he is wanted for violence by the police. An older sister can never return because she married someone of the 'opposite religion' and went to live in England.
Daily life is shaped by the conflict. Her maybe-boyfriend is in trouble for holding on to a British-made car part. There are ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops,’ the right kind of butter, the TV shows you can and can’t watch (James Bond movies are out) and the right and wrong kind of tea. There are forbidden first names for boys (no Clive, Wilfred, Norman, Keith, Edgar, Clifford or a dozen others).
Paramilitary guys on each side hold kangaroo courts to keep their people in line. You don’t call the police or an ambulance – that gets you notice from ‘the authorities. It’s likely they won’t come anyway for fear of an ambush. There are constant camera clicks as authorities take pictures from behind trees and in parked cars.
Middle Sister is odd and stands out. That's a mistake in that environment. She jogs and she reads while she walks. She attracts the attention of a paramilitary guy known as the Milkman, who stalks her. She’s 18 and her mother has been after her since she turned 16 to ‘do the proper thing’ and get married and start having kids.
There’s good writing:
“No one has ever come across a cat apologizing and if a cat did, it would be patently obvious it was not being sincere.”
“I opened my mouth, not sure, to say something – or maybe just to have it hang open.”
I liked it but I gave it a 4, rather than a 5. It was quite good but it did seem to drag out a bit.
Top photo:IRA men going to plant a bomb, 1987, from belfasttelegraph.co.uk
A bomb as late as 1998 killed 29 people. From irishtimes.com
Photo of the author from economist.com
[Edited 3/31/22 and 9/8/23]
The book has thousands of reviews on GR so I’ll go easy on the summary. You’ll probably like it - or you won’t. There is a dichotomy in the reviews with mostly 4’s and 5’s but many 1’s and 2’s and a lot of DNFs.
The 'Voice': this isn’t a quote but a list of vocabulary to give an example: “Ach aye yeah, middle sister, wee sisters, my maybe-boyfriend, his maybe-girlfriend, renouncers, the opposite religion, over-the-water, over the border, this side of the road, that side of the road, it’s not wee buns, ach aye no…”
Here’s an example of the voice from a passage where her mother talks to her about her deceased father. “She meant depressions, for da had had them: big, massive, scudding, whooping, black-cloud, infectious, crow, raven, jackdaw, coffin-upon-coffin, catacomb-upon-catacomb, skeletons-upon-skulls-upon-bones crawling along the ground to the grave type of depressions.”
There is very little back-and-forth dialog, but passages of conversation are included in the one paragraph per page structure.
The story is all centered on the euphemistically called 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland especially from the late 1960s through 1988. The author was born in 1962, so she lived in Belfast during most of this time and was ten at the time of peak violence, 1972. More than 3,500 people were killed in the violence from shootings and bombings, or shot by British soldiers or by paramilitary groups on each side – Catholic and Protestant – her 'opposite religions.' This is a huge number of deaths for a city the size of, say, Toledo, Ohio or Plymouth, UK.
Every family in the story is touched by the violence in some way, and in those days, Catholics had large families. In the main character’s family, she has had a brother shot and a brother-in-law killed by a car bomb. Another brother is on the run because he is wanted for violence by the police. An older sister can never return because she married someone of the 'opposite religion' and went to live in England.
Daily life is shaped by the conflict. Her maybe-boyfriend is in trouble for holding on to a British-made car part. There are ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops,’ the right kind of butter, the TV shows you can and can’t watch (James Bond movies are out) and the right and wrong kind of tea. There are forbidden first names for boys (no Clive, Wilfred, Norman, Keith, Edgar, Clifford or a dozen others).
Paramilitary guys on each side hold kangaroo courts to keep their people in line. You don’t call the police or an ambulance – that gets you notice from ‘the authorities. It’s likely they won’t come anyway for fear of an ambush. There are constant camera clicks as authorities take pictures from behind trees and in parked cars.
Middle Sister is odd and stands out. That's a mistake in that environment. She jogs and she reads while she walks. She attracts the attention of a paramilitary guy known as the Milkman, who stalks her. She’s 18 and her mother has been after her since she turned 16 to ‘do the proper thing’ and get married and start having kids.
There’s good writing:
“No one has ever come across a cat apologizing and if a cat did, it would be patently obvious it was not being sincere.”
“I opened my mouth, not sure, to say something – or maybe just to have it hang open.”
I liked it but I gave it a 4, rather than a 5. It was quite good but it did seem to drag out a bit.
Top photo:IRA men going to plant a bomb, 1987, from belfasttelegraph.co.uk
A bomb as late as 1998 killed 29 people. From irishtimes.com
Photo of the author from economist.com
[Edited 3/31/22 and 9/8/23]
September 26, 2023
Now deserved winner of the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award (one which acts as a kind of after publication year “best of” award - this year pitting in the shortlist winners of the Booker, Women’s Prize, Giller, NBA and Nobel).
PREVIOUS a COMMENT
One year on from its win and this book’s sales and reputation go for strength to strength. Anna Burns gave a moving speech at the recent Booker award dinner for 2019 which I was lucky enough to attend. The 2019 longlist had many strong books but nothing to match the brilliance and distinctiveness of this one.
UPDATED THOUGHTS
One of my top books of 2018 and after a re read (which I enjoyed even more than first time around) likely to be one of my top reads in 2019.
This was also the Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Purely in my view this was always the standout book on the longlist and the best winner for years - however (just as I predicted in my original review) this is not a book for everyone as can be seen in some of the reviews of this book.
I do find something meta-fictional about the fact that a book about a divided community, with the two sides holding entrenched positions, generating a similar reaction among my literary friends - I have visions of the fans of the book manning barricades in its defence, while its detractors chant "No surrender to the Book-r-prize" and “Le ciel est blu”
And I have posted elsewhere - it seems that say 2/3rd of people absolutely love this book and 1 / 3rd simply cannot tolerate it. This is in line with scientific evidence - Wikipedia estimates 35% of the global population are lactose intolerant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose...)
OPENING QUOTE
ANNA BURNS AND HER LITERARY DEVELOPMENT
Anna Burns’s debut novel – her first No Bones was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002 – 15 years after the author moved from Catholic Belfast to England as a 25 year old in 1987. This is only her third novel (with one novella) since then and the acknowledgements hint at a trying life story. (update: this difficult back story has now been confirmed interviews since the author won the prize).
No Bones covered the story of a young girl growing up in the Troubles in Belfast; Little Constructions – her second novel - an Irish criminal family.
My reviews here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In a New Statesman reading and interview at Foyles in the week of the Booker award - an event I was fortunate enough to attend - Anna Burns discussed her three books. My recollections and understanding of what she said was that: her saying that her first book "No Bones" was dealing with her issues as an individual; her second “Little Constructions” with her issues with the family unit; and that finally now in her third book “Milkman” she was able to consider her issues with the society in which she grew up
MILKMAN
This book is set in Belfast in the early 1990s, but a Belfast not named but described with a nomenclature which reminded me of the allegorical approach of a Magnus Mills novel:
The opening paragraph of the novel – at the start of my review – sets out both the style of the novel and its limited storyline.
The book is narrated in a wonderful first-person voice by an unnamed girl, looking back on when she was eighteen years old.
The voice perhaps has something of Lisa McInerney and Eimear McBride (perhaps even Mike Mc Cormack) but with its own distinctive freshness and black humour.
Despite (or perhaps because of) her almost-boyfriend, the narrator has two unwanted admirers:
• The milkman – a older man and “renouncer” (IRA) intelligence office who uses his undercover skills to persistently engineer encounters with her, while accumulating and casually revealing his knowledge of every aspect of her life;
• Somebody Mc Somebody – the only surviving son of a renouncer family which has been struck by serial tragedy and who has self-delusions that he is a senior renouncer agent.
CHARACTERS
The novel features a wonderful cast of characters, known not by their names but identified with a similar nomenclature to that in the above description of Belfast.
Examples of individual characters include:
• maybe-boyfriend (her almost partner – a motor mechanic who hoards car parts and who sets off a chain of events by bringing home the super-charger from a Bentley – a car firmly identified as being from “over the water”);
• nuclear-boy (Somebody McSomebody’s brother – obsessed with the prospect of a Russia-America nuclear war to the bemusement of those around him); chef (her boyfriends best friend, a gay brickie and one time serial-victim convinced he is a top cook);
• third brother-in-law (street fighter, sanctifier of women, obsessive runner)
• tablets girl, a.k.a. girl who was really a woman (the unhinged district poisoner;)
• real milkman.a.k.a. the man who didn’t love anybody, (a stern and ascetic “deeder of the goodness”, who openly defies the excesses of the enforcers and is an object of lifelong desire for …;)
• ma (obsessed with marrying off the narrator, her daughter, to one of “the nice wee boys from the area”)
Other characters are identified as collectives, for example:
• The wee ones (the narrator’s hyper-questioning, precociously intelligent younger sisters);
• The local paramilitary groupies (who attempt to induct her into their ranks);
• The issue women (a group of feminists resented but also protected by the traditional women).
• The ex-pious women – a group of ageing religious ladies who rival ma for the attentions of the real milkman
• The narrator, in a touch I loved and with which I could hugely empathise, is marked out as different and suspicious by the community, due to her habit of walking while reading:
The narrator challenges
to be told:
THEMES
The book brilliantly conveys the Troubles and the undercurrent of violence, the tribal suspicions, the oppressive conventions, the inter-community and community-soldier hatreds, and the oppressive gloom that it generates.
The narrator is both a product of her environment (she regrets that maybe-boyfriend does not have the culturally appropriate level of male-enthusiasm for football) and starting to strain against its restrictions.
In her increasing sense of awareness of the wider-world outside of the narrow confines she is expected to operate in she is aided by maybe-boyfriend who takes her to see a sunset and a French evening-class teacher who, in a funny but also pivotal scene encourages her class to look at the colours of the sky and explore both language and nature, despite their inherited ancestral scepticism.
But she is worn down by:
• the unwanted attentions of the milkman;
• his increasingly explicit threats that maybe-boyfriend will be car-bombed if she does not drop him;
• by the neighbourhood gossip, innuendo and questioning which takes her non-existent affair with him as a matter of established fact and starting point for further conjecture;
• her increasingly strained relationship with maybe-boyfriend who still lives under the shadow of the Bentley incident
STYLE
This is not a book for all readers – the plot is limited and even within its narrow confines, the author wanders across time meaning the book has only a limited sense of linearity. It is distinctly in my view at the Goldsmith/Republic of Consciousness end of the Booker spectrum (albeit surprisingly not shortlisted for that prize, with two less innovative Booker books making the list); and therefore all the more enjoyable for it.
The style too is not consistent – this is a book which can be at times (but only at times)
• Visceral - for example Rachel Cusk like massacre of “our side’s dogs by the “over the water” army
• Dark – violence and death are an everyday occurrence
• Tender – with an unexpected gay relationship and “grey” love affair
• Surreal/absurd – almost Magnus Mills style as for example the security forces struggle with the infiltration of a hospital by sexually obsessed ex-pious women
• Imaginative and inventive in its use of language – in the style of Eimear McBride
But it was a book that I loved.
CONCLUSION
Overall a bold and innovative choice for which the Booker Judges must be congratulated.
A distinct and darkly humorous novel which serves as a literary reminder of the Troubles – a difficult time in British history, and one which answers its own question:
PREVIOUS a COMMENT
One year on from its win and this book’s sales and reputation go for strength to strength. Anna Burns gave a moving speech at the recent Booker award dinner for 2019 which I was lucky enough to attend. The 2019 longlist had many strong books but nothing to match the brilliance and distinctiveness of this one.
UPDATED THOUGHTS
One of my top books of 2018 and after a re read (which I enjoyed even more than first time around) likely to be one of my top reads in 2019.
This was also the Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize. Purely in my view this was always the standout book on the longlist and the best winner for years - however (just as I predicted in my original review) this is not a book for everyone as can be seen in some of the reviews of this book.
I do find something meta-fictional about the fact that a book about a divided community, with the two sides holding entrenched positions, generating a similar reaction among my literary friends - I have visions of the fans of the book manning barricades in its defence, while its detractors chant "No surrender to the Book-r-prize" and “Le ciel est blu”
And I have posted elsewhere - it seems that say 2/3rd of people absolutely love this book and 1 / 3rd simply cannot tolerate it. This is in line with scientific evidence - Wikipedia estimates 35% of the global population are lactose intolerant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose...)
OPENING QUOTE
The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died. He had been shot by one of the state hit squads and I did not care about the shooting of this man. Others did care though, and some were those who, in the parlance, ‘knew me to see but not to speak to’ and I was being talked about because there was a rumour started by them, or more likely by first brother-in-law, that I had been having an affair with this milkman and that I was eighteen and he was forty-one.
ANNA BURNS AND HER LITERARY DEVELOPMENT
Anna Burns’s debut novel – her first No Bones was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002 – 15 years after the author moved from Catholic Belfast to England as a 25 year old in 1987. This is only her third novel (with one novella) since then and the acknowledgements hint at a trying life story. (update: this difficult back story has now been confirmed interviews since the author won the prize).
No Bones covered the story of a young girl growing up in the Troubles in Belfast; Little Constructions – her second novel - an Irish criminal family.
My reviews here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
In a New Statesman reading and interview at Foyles in the week of the Booker award - an event I was fortunate enough to attend - Anna Burns discussed her three books. My recollections and understanding of what she said was that: her saying that her first book "No Bones" was dealing with her issues as an individual; her second “Little Constructions” with her issues with the family unit; and that finally now in her third book “Milkman” she was able to consider her issues with the society in which she grew up
I think it’s because I’ve resolved something about family issues that I can now do the “bigger” issue – which actually, for me, is the lesser issue.
MILKMAN
This book is set in Belfast in the early 1990s, but a Belfast not named but described with a nomenclature which reminded me of the allegorical approach of a Magnus Mills novel:
At this time, in this place, when it came to the political problems, which included bombs and guns and death and maiming, ordinary people said ‘their side did it’ or ‘our side did it’, or ‘their religion did it’ or ‘our religion did it’ or ‘they did it’ or ‘we did it’, when what was really meant was ‘defenders-of-the-state did it’ or ‘renouncers-of-the-state did it’ or ‘the state did it’. Now and then we might make an effort and say ‘defender’ or ‘renouncer ….. that flag of the country from ‘over the water’ which was also the same flag of the community from ‘over the road’.
The opening paragraph of the novel – at the start of my review – sets out both the style of the novel and its limited storyline.
The book is narrated in a wonderful first-person voice by an unnamed girl, looking back on when she was eighteen years old.
The voice perhaps has something of Lisa McInerney and Eimear McBride (perhaps even Mike Mc Cormack) but with its own distinctive freshness and black humour.
Despite (or perhaps because of) her almost-boyfriend, the narrator has two unwanted admirers:
• The milkman – a older man and “renouncer” (IRA) intelligence office who uses his undercover skills to persistently engineer encounters with her, while accumulating and casually revealing his knowledge of every aspect of her life;
• Somebody Mc Somebody – the only surviving son of a renouncer family which has been struck by serial tragedy and who has self-delusions that he is a senior renouncer agent.
CHARACTERS
The novel features a wonderful cast of characters, known not by their names but identified with a similar nomenclature to that in the above description of Belfast.
Examples of individual characters include:
• maybe-boyfriend (her almost partner – a motor mechanic who hoards car parts and who sets off a chain of events by bringing home the super-charger from a Bentley – a car firmly identified as being from “over the water”);
• nuclear-boy (Somebody McSomebody’s brother – obsessed with the prospect of a Russia-America nuclear war to the bemusement of those around him); chef (her boyfriends best friend, a gay brickie and one time serial-victim convinced he is a top cook);
• third brother-in-law (street fighter, sanctifier of women, obsessive runner)
• tablets girl, a.k.a. girl who was really a woman (the unhinged district poisoner;)
• real milkman.a.k.a. the man who didn’t love anybody, (a stern and ascetic “deeder of the goodness”, who openly defies the excesses of the enforcers and is an object of lifelong desire for …;)
• ma (obsessed with marrying off the narrator, her daughter, to one of “the nice wee boys from the area”)
There was ma too, continuing her barrage of how I wouldn’t get married, of how I was bringing shame by entering paramilitary groupiedom, of how I was bringing down on myself dark and unruly forces, bad-exampling wee sisters, bringing in God too, as in light and dark and the satanic and the infernal.
Other characters are identified as collectives, for example:
• The wee ones (the narrator’s hyper-questioning, precociously intelligent younger sisters);
• The local paramilitary groupies (who attempt to induct her into their ranks);
• The issue women (a group of feminists resented but also protected by the traditional women).
• The ex-pious women – a group of ageing religious ladies who rival ma for the attentions of the real milkman
• The narrator, in a touch I loved and with which I could hugely empathise, is marked out as different and suspicious by the community, due to her habit of walking while reading:
It’s creepy, perverse, obstinately determined,’ went on longest friend. …. It’s the way you do it –reading books, whole books, taking notes, checking footnotes, underlining passages …. It’s disturbing. It’s deviant. It’s optical illusional. Not public-spirited. Not self-preservation. Calls attention to itself and why –with enemies at the door, with the community under siege, with us all having to pull together –would anyone want to call attention to themselves here?’
The narrator challenges
“Are you saying it’s okay for [The Milkman] to go around with Semtex but not okay for me to read Jane Eyre [walking about] in public?’
to be told:
look[ed] at it in its proper surroundings, then Semtex taking precedence as something normal over reading-while-walking –‘which nobody but you thinks is normal’ –could certainly be construed as the comprehensible interpretation here …. So, looked at in those terms, terms of contextual environment, then … it is okay for him and it’s not okay for you.’
THEMES
The book brilliantly conveys the Troubles and the undercurrent of violence, the tribal suspicions, the oppressive conventions, the inter-community and community-soldier hatreds, and the oppressive gloom that it generates.
Take a … statelet immersed …. conditioned… through years of personal and communal suffering, personal and communal history, to be overladen with heaviness and grief and fear and anger –well, these people could not, not at the drop of a hat, be open to any bright shining button of a person stepping into their environment and shining upon them just like that. As for the environment, that too, would object, backing up the pessimism of its people, which was what happened where I lived where the whole place always seemed to be in the dark. It was as if the electric lights were turned off, always turned off, even though dusk was over so they should have been turned on yet nobody was turning them on and nobody noticed either, they weren’t on. All this too, seemed normality which meant then, that part of normality, here was this constant, unacknowledged struggle to see.
The narrator is both a product of her environment (she regrets that maybe-boyfriend does not have the culturally appropriate level of male-enthusiasm for football) and starting to strain against its restrictions.
In her increasing sense of awareness of the wider-world outside of the narrow confines she is expected to operate in she is aided by maybe-boyfriend who takes her to see a sunset and a French evening-class teacher who, in a funny but also pivotal scene encourages her class to look at the colours of the sky and explore both language and nature, despite their inherited ancestral scepticism.
After generation upon generation, fathers upon forefathers, mothers upon foremothers, centuries and millennia of being one colour officially and three colours unofficially, a colourful sky, just like that, could not be allowed to be.
Teacher started again. This time it was the fugacious (whatever that meant) black appearance of street trees owing to the crepuscular (whatever that meant) quality of the sky behind them, with the others –still in their own struggle –complaining that our town didn’t have fugacity, crepuscules or street trees, black or any colour, before being made to look again and conceding that okay, maybe we did have street trees but they must have been put in half an hour earlier as nobody here had noticed them before.
But she is worn down by:
• the unwanted attentions of the milkman;
• his increasingly explicit threats that maybe-boyfriend will be car-bombed if she does not drop him;
• by the neighbourhood gossip, innuendo and questioning which takes her non-existent affair with him as a matter of established fact and starting point for further conjecture;
• her increasingly strained relationship with maybe-boyfriend who still lives under the shadow of the Bentley incident
And all this spelled a serious turning bad for us, for me and maybe-boyfriend –in the way that the rumour about me and the milkman in my area was affecting me, and in the way that the rumour about him and the flag in his area was affecting him.
STYLE
This is not a book for all readers – the plot is limited and even within its narrow confines, the author wanders across time meaning the book has only a limited sense of linearity. It is distinctly in my view at the Goldsmith/Republic of Consciousness end of the Booker spectrum (albeit surprisingly not shortlisted for that prize, with two less innovative Booker books making the list); and therefore all the more enjoyable for it.
The style too is not consistent – this is a book which can be at times (but only at times)
• Visceral - for example Rachel Cusk like massacre of “our side’s dogs by the “over the water” army
• Dark – violence and death are an everyday occurrence
• Tender – with an unexpected gay relationship and “grey” love affair
• Surreal/absurd – almost Magnus Mills style as for example the security forces struggle with the infiltration of a hospital by sexually obsessed ex-pious women
• Imaginative and inventive in its use of language – in the style of Eimear McBride
But it was a book that I loved.
CONCLUSION
Overall a bold and innovative choice for which the Booker Judges must be congratulated.
A distinct and darkly humorous novel which serves as a literary reminder of the Troubles – a difficult time in British history, and one which answers its own question:
‘You never know,’ they said, ‘what might be considered the most sought-after paraphernalia of these sadnesses in years to come.’
December 4, 2021
This book represents the very best literary fiction has to offer, as well as much of what puts people off. Highly original, with distinctively crafted sentence structure, dense with meaning, and plenty of things to say about both the political and the personal. Lofty and lowly ideas. Ach, it's lovely. Ach, 'tis.
It's also "difficult". Difficult to read, because of those sentences I lauded earlier. Those long, elliptical, musical sentences that live in equally long paragraphs. Difficult, perhaps, because of the analytical form which starts at generalities and then zeroes in and zeroes in and zeroes in again until we are at a speck of dust on a shelf. There was a part about halfway through so analytical and philosophical, she alllllllmost lost me (not quite, though she lost a star). Ach, it's doing my head in. Ach, fuckit.
So I understand why this book has polarised reactions. As for me, I am still marvelling at the sparkling genius of it all. Set in Ireland during the times of "the troubles", the story belongs to an 18 year old female narrator who is stalked by 'the milkman', a notoriously dangerous renouncer of the state. Burns does a remarkable job of telling the menacing experience of this stalking, as well as the paranoid, fear-ridden society at large, in which it is dangerous to be an individual. And by individual I mean, different, and by different, I mean, think for yourself, and by think for yourself, I mean, reading a book while walking, or acknowledging more than one colour that the sky could possibly be, or going to the hospital when sick.
It's a time of great paranoia and suffocating fear. This fear is certainly due to the political climate, and it leaks out in ways that are not political. The fear of being alone, the fear of being shamed, the fear of death. People are unhappy, mismatched in their relationships, misunderstood and improperly labeled. There is also a great deal of violence, to people as well as animals.
Burns performs a skillful balancing act. Despite the fear to name the sunset's colours, that sunset is still there, in all its glory. Despite the darkness, there is humour. Despite all the blunders, there is hope - in the face of wee sisters, in teenage infatuation born anew in a fifty year old woman, in the life force that keeps a runner running.
She makes you work for it, but Anna Burns delivers something worth working for: hope.
It's also "difficult". Difficult to read, because of those sentences I lauded earlier. Those long, elliptical, musical sentences that live in equally long paragraphs. Difficult, perhaps, because of the analytical form which starts at generalities and then zeroes in and zeroes in and zeroes in again until we are at a speck of dust on a shelf. There was a part about halfway through so analytical and philosophical, she alllllllmost lost me (not quite, though she lost a star). Ach, it's doing my head in. Ach, fuckit.
So I understand why this book has polarised reactions. As for me, I am still marvelling at the sparkling genius of it all. Set in Ireland during the times of "the troubles", the story belongs to an 18 year old female narrator who is stalked by 'the milkman', a notoriously dangerous renouncer of the state. Burns does a remarkable job of telling the menacing experience of this stalking, as well as the paranoid, fear-ridden society at large, in which it is dangerous to be an individual. And by individual I mean, different, and by different, I mean, think for yourself, and by think for yourself, I mean, reading a book while walking, or acknowledging more than one colour that the sky could possibly be, or going to the hospital when sick.
It's a time of great paranoia and suffocating fear. This fear is certainly due to the political climate, and it leaks out in ways that are not political. The fear of being alone, the fear of being shamed, the fear of death. People are unhappy, mismatched in their relationships, misunderstood and improperly labeled. There is also a great deal of violence, to people as well as animals.
Burns performs a skillful balancing act. Despite the fear to name the sunset's colours, that sunset is still there, in all its glory. Despite the darkness, there is humour. Despite all the blunders, there is hope - in the face of wee sisters, in teenage infatuation born anew in a fifty year old woman, in the life force that keeps a runner running.
She makes you work for it, but Anna Burns delivers something worth working for: hope.
October 16, 2018
Man Booker 2018 WINNER! So well deserved; congrats, Anna Burns!
I loved Milkman, but it's so painfully niche I can't think of anyone I'd personally recommend it to. Set in an unnamed city that's probably Belfast in the 1970s, Milkman follows an unnamed narrator who's believed by her community to be having an affair with a man known only as 'the milkman,' who isn't actually a milkman. Told in stream-of-consciousness prose and set against the backdrop of the Troubles, Milkman doesn't offer much of a plot, but it does provide a perceptive and intelligent look at a community under duress and constant surveillance.
It also starts with these stellar opening lines:
But this book is hard work, I will readily admit that. Though I loved the narrator's sharp observational commentary, even I found the narrative style painfully long-winded at times. Paragraphs go on for pages; chapters go on for hours; the kind of concentration it takes to really immerse yourself in this novel can be draining. This is not what anyone would describe as an easy read, and I think it's the kind of book that's going to fall under the category of 'I appreciated it but I didn't like it' for a lot of people.
This line of thought actually made me reflect on what it means to 'like' a book, because I wouldn't describe my reading experience as 'fun,' necessarily, but despite that, I found Milkman incredibly rewarding. Anna Burns deftly crafts a living, breathing community, and paints a portrait of the realities of living in a city torn apart by civil unrest. Rumors and false perceptions dog these characters, and our narrator in particular, who's considered an oddity, a 'beyond-the-pale,' due to the fact that she often reads while walking. In order to fit in in a society like this, every time you leave the house you have to bury a part of yourself, and Milkman incisively and comprehensively examines the toll that takes. I don't know if I've ever read another novel that so expertly evokes the kind of anxiety that comes from the inability to trust your neighbor or even your own family. Characters in this novel operate under a veil of formality that you as a reader want to peel back to reveal their genuine hopes and fears and aspirations, but of course all you're able to do is mutely watch them navigate social situations while unable to truly express themselves. This book can be infuriating because of that, but it's supposed to be. There's also an undeniably feminist undercurrent to the whole thing, as the narrator laments the difficulties unique to women during this time, though it remains a subtle element throughout.
Though it’s ultimately more of a psychological story than a historical one, drawing obvious parallels to any number of totalitarian regimes across history, Milkman does feel firmly rooted in its Northern Irish setting. This is a recognizably Irish novel, from its stream-of-consciousness prose to its pitch-black humor, and there's no question that that played a huge role in my ultimate enjoyment of it, so above all else I think I'd recommend this to anyone who loves Irish lit and Irish history, but who can tolerate a lack of plot and likes their novels a bit on the philosophical side.
Personally, I'll be thrilled if this is shortlisted for the Booker, but I also doubt that likelihood as it's not the kind of novel that's destined to reach a wide audience - not that the Booker necessarily prioritizes accessibility, but I would just find it unlikely if all five judges are in complete agreement about this one's merits enough to advance it. But who knows. This had already been on my radar before the longlist announcement, but I'm very happy that it pushed me to read it sooner than I otherwise would have.
EDIT on 10/15: I changed my mind. I think it's going to win!
I loved Milkman, but it's so painfully niche I can't think of anyone I'd personally recommend it to. Set in an unnamed city that's probably Belfast in the 1970s, Milkman follows an unnamed narrator who's believed by her community to be having an affair with a man known only as 'the milkman,' who isn't actually a milkman. Told in stream-of-consciousness prose and set against the backdrop of the Troubles, Milkman doesn't offer much of a plot, but it does provide a perceptive and intelligent look at a community under duress and constant surveillance.
It also starts with these stellar opening lines:
"The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died. He had been shot by one of the state hit squads and I did not care about the shooting of this man. Others did care though, and some were those who, in the parlance, ‘knew me to see but not to speak to’ and I was being talked about because there was a rumour started by them, or more likely by first brother-in-law, that I had been having an affair with this milkman and that I was eighteen and he was forty-one."
But this book is hard work, I will readily admit that. Though I loved the narrator's sharp observational commentary, even I found the narrative style painfully long-winded at times. Paragraphs go on for pages; chapters go on for hours; the kind of concentration it takes to really immerse yourself in this novel can be draining. This is not what anyone would describe as an easy read, and I think it's the kind of book that's going to fall under the category of 'I appreciated it but I didn't like it' for a lot of people.
This line of thought actually made me reflect on what it means to 'like' a book, because I wouldn't describe my reading experience as 'fun,' necessarily, but despite that, I found Milkman incredibly rewarding. Anna Burns deftly crafts a living, breathing community, and paints a portrait of the realities of living in a city torn apart by civil unrest. Rumors and false perceptions dog these characters, and our narrator in particular, who's considered an oddity, a 'beyond-the-pale,' due to the fact that she often reads while walking. In order to fit in in a society like this, every time you leave the house you have to bury a part of yourself, and Milkman incisively and comprehensively examines the toll that takes. I don't know if I've ever read another novel that so expertly evokes the kind of anxiety that comes from the inability to trust your neighbor or even your own family. Characters in this novel operate under a veil of formality that you as a reader want to peel back to reveal their genuine hopes and fears and aspirations, but of course all you're able to do is mutely watch them navigate social situations while unable to truly express themselves. This book can be infuriating because of that, but it's supposed to be. There's also an undeniably feminist undercurrent to the whole thing, as the narrator laments the difficulties unique to women during this time, though it remains a subtle element throughout.
Though it’s ultimately more of a psychological story than a historical one, drawing obvious parallels to any number of totalitarian regimes across history, Milkman does feel firmly rooted in its Northern Irish setting. This is a recognizably Irish novel, from its stream-of-consciousness prose to its pitch-black humor, and there's no question that that played a huge role in my ultimate enjoyment of it, so above all else I think I'd recommend this to anyone who loves Irish lit and Irish history, but who can tolerate a lack of plot and likes their novels a bit on the philosophical side.
Personally, I'll be thrilled if this is shortlisted for the Booker, but I also doubt that likelihood as it's not the kind of novel that's destined to reach a wide audience - not that the Booker necessarily prioritizes accessibility, but I would just find it unlikely if all five judges are in complete agreement about this one's merits enough to advance it. But who knows. This had already been on my radar before the longlist announcement, but I'm very happy that it pushed me to read it sooner than I otherwise would have.
EDIT on 10/15: I changed my mind. I think it's going to win!
November 23, 2020
4.5*
Winner of the Booker Prize 2018, Winner of International Dublin Literary Award 2020 and of other prizes.
This year has been a wonder from the reading perspective. I discovered some exciting new authors (for me) and I am happy to confirm that Ann Burns is one of them. I’ve wanted to read Milkman since it won the Booker prize in 2018 but I finally took the plunge when I found out it also won the International Dublin Literary Award and that one of my groups on GR is going to read it in November. I also realized that this year I read the last three winners of the Booker Prize (Milkman, Girl, Woman, Other and Shuggie Bain) and I awarded 5* stars to each of them. It seems that the judges and I have similar taste, at least regarding the winners.
Even if it is not explicitly stated, the story in Milkman takes place in Ireland during the Troubles. The main character and the narrator is the Middle Sister, an 18 year old girl who tries to stay away from the political and social struggles of the time. She does her best to mind her own business when it seems that her business is everybody’s business. Everybody is watched and listening, the paranoia is extreme. The pressure to comply with the catholic social conventions adds to the oppression felt by the MC. She is stalked by the Milkman, a married middle-aged man and a renouncer of the State, meaning a terrorist. Because she is seen in the presence of the guy and because of the social conventions mentioned above, she is rumored to be his lover and from here her life gets disrupted in unexpected ways. What follows is a stream of consciousness type musings on constant surveillance, oppression of women, the expectation of society and its destructiveness, inability to trust anybody, the ridiculousness of the Troubles politics, the risk of individuality in a society where one has to meet certain expectations or become “beyond the pale” and many other themes.
This novel is distinctive and amazing. There are a few aspects that make it unique. There are no names in this novel, everybody is known by their place in the family, their relationship with the main character or their occupation. Some of the characters are mum, 1st brother, 1st sister, 2nd brother and so on, Maybe boyfriend, Longest friend, The Real Milkman etc. The author brilliantly combines black humor with drama. She can at one point create an atmosphere of oppression and terror only to be followed by a humorous domestic scene with the wee sisters, for example.
I believe the novel can be difficult sometimes because of the way the sentences are designed. As such, I thought the audiobook to be the best medium for this novel. Bríd Brennan does an amazing job to step in the shoes of Middle Sisters and to make us feel exactly as the author intended. The accent, the pacing, everything is excellent in her voice. The story drags a little at some points and listening instead of reading helped me overcome those moments of boredom.
I enjoyed Milkman immensely overall and I thought to be a worthy prize winner. However, the way it was written and the subject does not make it a novel for every taste and that’s perfectly fine.
Winner of the Booker Prize 2018, Winner of International Dublin Literary Award 2020 and of other prizes.
This year has been a wonder from the reading perspective. I discovered some exciting new authors (for me) and I am happy to confirm that Ann Burns is one of them. I’ve wanted to read Milkman since it won the Booker prize in 2018 but I finally took the plunge when I found out it also won the International Dublin Literary Award and that one of my groups on GR is going to read it in November. I also realized that this year I read the last three winners of the Booker Prize (Milkman, Girl, Woman, Other and Shuggie Bain) and I awarded 5* stars to each of them. It seems that the judges and I have similar taste, at least regarding the winners.
Even if it is not explicitly stated, the story in Milkman takes place in Ireland during the Troubles. The main character and the narrator is the Middle Sister, an 18 year old girl who tries to stay away from the political and social struggles of the time. She does her best to mind her own business when it seems that her business is everybody’s business. Everybody is watched and listening, the paranoia is extreme. The pressure to comply with the catholic social conventions adds to the oppression felt by the MC. She is stalked by the Milkman, a married middle-aged man and a renouncer of the State, meaning a terrorist. Because she is seen in the presence of the guy and because of the social conventions mentioned above, she is rumored to be his lover and from here her life gets disrupted in unexpected ways. What follows is a stream of consciousness type musings on constant surveillance, oppression of women, the expectation of society and its destructiveness, inability to trust anybody, the ridiculousness of the Troubles politics, the risk of individuality in a society where one has to meet certain expectations or become “beyond the pale” and many other themes.
This novel is distinctive and amazing. There are a few aspects that make it unique. There are no names in this novel, everybody is known by their place in the family, their relationship with the main character or their occupation. Some of the characters are mum, 1st brother, 1st sister, 2nd brother and so on, Maybe boyfriend, Longest friend, The Real Milkman etc. The author brilliantly combines black humor with drama. She can at one point create an atmosphere of oppression and terror only to be followed by a humorous domestic scene with the wee sisters, for example.
I believe the novel can be difficult sometimes because of the way the sentences are designed. As such, I thought the audiobook to be the best medium for this novel. Bríd Brennan does an amazing job to step in the shoes of Middle Sisters and to make us feel exactly as the author intended. The accent, the pacing, everything is excellent in her voice. The story drags a little at some points and listening instead of reading helped me overcome those moments of boredom.
I enjoyed Milkman immensely overall and I thought to be a worthy prize winner. However, the way it was written and the subject does not make it a novel for every taste and that’s perfectly fine.
March 1, 2019
Many writers strive for a fresh vibrant distinctive voice; few achieve it as well as Anna Burns does in this novel. It was fitting that I read this while reading Toni Morrison's Beloved because both novels have a fresh and innovative female voice at the helm and both very cleverly and subtly bring heaps of searing intelligence to the essentially uneducated worlds they depict.
Milkman is an evocation of a world in which bigotry rules supreme. And this bigotry is mocked relentlessly with often hilarious biting ingenious satire. No one in the novel gets a name as if names in this world are meaningless. Everyone is tagged, like walls. Milkman himself, probably a candidate for most sinister villain of the decade, isn't a milkman at all. He's the sum total of fearful rumour, a veritable stalking bogeyman. Two things though are certain. Firstly, he possesses intimidating authority as an enforcer of the repressive status quo. And secondly, he drives a white van, one of misogyny's most benign yet potent symbols. When he begins driving alongside our narrator who likes to read while walking her autonomy, identity and living space all suddenly shrink under his menacing interest. Though there's no overt sexual harassment the narrator explains her predicament - "At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were - if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn't there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment."
The armed forces of "that country over the water" pose little tangible threat in Milkman. What everyone most fears is the opinion of their neighbours. Because this is an us and them world which permits no nuance of allegiance. You're either with us or you're against us. Everyday life is an obstacle course of not providing the local gossip mongers any reason to single you out. To be singled out is to invite suspicions of belonging to them, not us. The narrator's "maybe boyfriend" gets into trouble when he wins part of a Bentley car in a raffle. To his neighbours this small piece of engineering is a symbol of "the country over the water". This scene is one of the many brilliant withering mockeries of mob mentality, ideological paranoia and the underhand blood lust innate in draconian repressive measures. Another of my favourite scenes is when the narrator tries to convince her mother she's still attractive and resorts to the tactic of throwing high-sounding numbers at her, just as politicians often do on our TV screens. So Milkman is about much more than Belfast during the troubles. It's about the hard and stifling lines that are drawn up for us and the often exhausting struggle to push them back. And it's brilliant.
Milkman is an evocation of a world in which bigotry rules supreme. And this bigotry is mocked relentlessly with often hilarious biting ingenious satire. No one in the novel gets a name as if names in this world are meaningless. Everyone is tagged, like walls. Milkman himself, probably a candidate for most sinister villain of the decade, isn't a milkman at all. He's the sum total of fearful rumour, a veritable stalking bogeyman. Two things though are certain. Firstly, he possesses intimidating authority as an enforcer of the repressive status quo. And secondly, he drives a white van, one of misogyny's most benign yet potent symbols. When he begins driving alongside our narrator who likes to read while walking her autonomy, identity and living space all suddenly shrink under his menacing interest. Though there's no overt sexual harassment the narrator explains her predicament - "At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were - if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn't there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment."
The armed forces of "that country over the water" pose little tangible threat in Milkman. What everyone most fears is the opinion of their neighbours. Because this is an us and them world which permits no nuance of allegiance. You're either with us or you're against us. Everyday life is an obstacle course of not providing the local gossip mongers any reason to single you out. To be singled out is to invite suspicions of belonging to them, not us. The narrator's "maybe boyfriend" gets into trouble when he wins part of a Bentley car in a raffle. To his neighbours this small piece of engineering is a symbol of "the country over the water". This scene is one of the many brilliant withering mockeries of mob mentality, ideological paranoia and the underhand blood lust innate in draconian repressive measures. Another of my favourite scenes is when the narrator tries to convince her mother she's still attractive and resorts to the tactic of throwing high-sounding numbers at her, just as politicians often do on our TV screens. So Milkman is about much more than Belfast during the troubles. It's about the hard and stifling lines that are drawn up for us and the often exhausting struggle to push them back. And it's brilliant.
October 16, 2018
Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2018 *sigh*
This isn't a bad book, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all - which confronts me with the challenge to do the novel justice while also explaining why it didn't appeal to me. Challenge accepted!
"Milkman" tells the story of an 18-year-old woman in Belfast during the Troubles. While she is trying to stay out of the turmoil around her, even going as far as reading while she is walking the city, this attempt is obviously doomed: In times of a crisis of this magnitude, everything becomes political, and everyone is drawn into the conflict in his or her own way. Burns main aim is to show how the charged situation disrupts communities, not only between the two opposing sides, but also within the narrator's party: Who might be a traitor? Who is not properly supporting the cause? Who doesn't conform to the group's standards? Who might be a spy? Fear and fanatism drive the people into a frenzy, a kind of communal neurosis, fueled by the constant state of emergency they live in.
What I liked about the book is that Burns manages to write about a specific historic situation, but to transcend her story way beyond that: She does a great job detailing the psychological effects of fear and trauma, and these effects of the Troubles can be transferred to many conflicts and politically charged situations - as I am German, many passages reminded me of stories I heard and books I read about the GDR, where people also lived in constant fear of being spied upon, of being ostracized and ruined because they were declared to be traitors to the socialist cause, no matter what they really did or did not believe.
Our narrator is in a comparable situation, as she is accused of having an affair with the married "Milkman", which is not the case - still, people in the community create a reality by perpetuating the story. Large parts - in fact, very large parts - of the book are comprised of the protagonist's ruminations, and while many of her thoughts are interesting per se, she goes on and on and on and accesses certain aspects from all angles possible, again and again. From a poetic standpoint, this makes sense: There is not much real action, but much talk that goes around in circles and thus becomes the reality of the book and of the protagonist's life. But I found it tedious to read, and in parts I got seriously annoyed because I felt like I had long gotten the point, but Burns was still hammering it home for the sake of going all the way through with her poetic concept - very consequential, but for my taste, also very garrulous in parts.
Talking about ideas that are repeated ad infintum: Another important topic in the book are names and labels, because, as I explained above, the expressions that are attached to a person tend to become and utterly define the person (or the other way around) in the context of the conflict. Thus, there is "Milkman" (a senior paramilitary figure who stalks and threatens our protagonist), "the real Milkman" (surprise: He really is a milkman), "maybe-boyfriend", the "longest friend from primary school", the "land-over-the-water" and "the land-over-the-border", and so on and so forth - after the 3,000th mention of "maybe-boyfriend", I thought the idea to constantly repeat these labels became "maybe-pretentious". It's not that I don't see what Burns is doing here, but repeating an idea over 400 pages turns clever into annoying, IMHO.
It needs to be said that while this is a serious book about serious stuff, it is also in parts very funny, as Burns underlines the absurdity of the whole situation, and as the story progresses, it becomes more and more bizarre (which I didn't mind). I also found the way Burns explores the role of women and marriage way more interesting as in, let's say, its fellow Booker nominee The Water Cure.
Still, to finish this was a chore - I saw the intellectual and literary merit of the book, but I can't say that I had fun reading it.
This isn't a bad book, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all - which confronts me with the challenge to do the novel justice while also explaining why it didn't appeal to me. Challenge accepted!
"Milkman" tells the story of an 18-year-old woman in Belfast during the Troubles. While she is trying to stay out of the turmoil around her, even going as far as reading while she is walking the city, this attempt is obviously doomed: In times of a crisis of this magnitude, everything becomes political, and everyone is drawn into the conflict in his or her own way. Burns main aim is to show how the charged situation disrupts communities, not only between the two opposing sides, but also within the narrator's party: Who might be a traitor? Who is not properly supporting the cause? Who doesn't conform to the group's standards? Who might be a spy? Fear and fanatism drive the people into a frenzy, a kind of communal neurosis, fueled by the constant state of emergency they live in.
What I liked about the book is that Burns manages to write about a specific historic situation, but to transcend her story way beyond that: She does a great job detailing the psychological effects of fear and trauma, and these effects of the Troubles can be transferred to many conflicts and politically charged situations - as I am German, many passages reminded me of stories I heard and books I read about the GDR, where people also lived in constant fear of being spied upon, of being ostracized and ruined because they were declared to be traitors to the socialist cause, no matter what they really did or did not believe.
Our narrator is in a comparable situation, as she is accused of having an affair with the married "Milkman", which is not the case - still, people in the community create a reality by perpetuating the story. Large parts - in fact, very large parts - of the book are comprised of the protagonist's ruminations, and while many of her thoughts are interesting per se, she goes on and on and on and accesses certain aspects from all angles possible, again and again. From a poetic standpoint, this makes sense: There is not much real action, but much talk that goes around in circles and thus becomes the reality of the book and of the protagonist's life. But I found it tedious to read, and in parts I got seriously annoyed because I felt like I had long gotten the point, but Burns was still hammering it home for the sake of going all the way through with her poetic concept - very consequential, but for my taste, also very garrulous in parts.
Talking about ideas that are repeated ad infintum: Another important topic in the book are names and labels, because, as I explained above, the expressions that are attached to a person tend to become and utterly define the person (or the other way around) in the context of the conflict. Thus, there is "Milkman" (a senior paramilitary figure who stalks and threatens our protagonist), "the real Milkman" (surprise: He really is a milkman), "maybe-boyfriend", the "longest friend from primary school", the "land-over-the-water" and "the land-over-the-border", and so on and so forth - after the 3,000th mention of "maybe-boyfriend", I thought the idea to constantly repeat these labels became "maybe-pretentious". It's not that I don't see what Burns is doing here, but repeating an idea over 400 pages turns clever into annoying, IMHO.
It needs to be said that while this is a serious book about serious stuff, it is also in parts very funny, as Burns underlines the absurdity of the whole situation, and as the story progresses, it becomes more and more bizarre (which I didn't mind). I also found the way Burns explores the role of women and marriage way more interesting as in, let's say, its fellow Booker nominee The Water Cure.
Still, to finish this was a chore - I saw the intellectual and literary merit of the book, but I can't say that I had fun reading it.
November 20, 2023
don't mind me, just deciding to read award winners years after anyone last talked about them.
this was very experimental and clever and interesting and yet somehow almost never a very compelling read to me.
i just...never really looked forward to picking this one up. while i was impressed by it, i didn't feel connected to the characters or enveloped by the writing, and its repetition and surreal-ness both kept me going out of admiration and put me off.
which is pretty eh, in the end.
bottom line: i get it, but i don't get it.
this was very experimental and clever and interesting and yet somehow almost never a very compelling read to me.
i just...never really looked forward to picking this one up. while i was impressed by it, i didn't feel connected to the characters or enveloped by the writing, and its repetition and surreal-ness both kept me going out of admiration and put me off.
which is pretty eh, in the end.
bottom line: i get it, but i don't get it.
June 13, 2023
IL PARADIGMA DELLA VIOLENZA
Quella sera dopo cena, a nove anni, sono uscita per le mie ultime avventure della giornata e sono passata davanti a quello stesso vialetto in cui, come sempre, a quell’ora, erano impilate le molotov per una nuova imminente sommossa del distretto. Non c’era alcuna traccia dei cani morti, benché mi fosse arrivata una folata di quel potente disinfettante, il Jeyes Fluid. Questo non me lo sarei più dimenticato, perché fino a quel momento avevo sempre amato quel particolare odore di casa.
Ricapitolando, i soldati uccidevano i cani, e la gente del posto uccideva i gatti, e ora i gatti venivano anche uccisi dalla Luftwaffe…
Benvenuti nel medioevo prossimo venturo. Benvenuti nell’Afghanistan d’Europa. Benvenuti nel paese più chiuso, bigotto, triste e squallido del vecchio continente. Un posto dove si fatica a vedere altri colori nel cielo oltre l’azzurro, e dove andare a vedere un tramonto ha qualcosa di eversivo.
Per quanto mai davvero specificato, è evidente che il romanzo sia ambientato in una qualche città dell’Irlanda del nord, forse Belfast, negli anni Settanta, nel cosiddetto periodo dei “troubles”, lunga fase pazzesca della lunghissima assurda occupazione britannica, tuttora in piedi in pieno terzo millennio.
Anne Burns rende a meraviglia la claustrofobia che soffoca la città, la piccola nazione, la gente tutta: adotta una lingua unica e originale che mette in bocca alla sua io narrante, mai chiamata per nome.
È una ragazza di diciotto anni, con vari fratelli e sorelle, sia maggiori che minori, sia morti, (morto anche il padre) che vivi. La ragazza parla e racconta e rimugina e riflette con ritmo ripetitivo, insistito, a momenti perfino ossessivo, ma senza mai mettere da parte una leggera ironia che tutto illumina e riscalda. Sì, come è stato fatto notare, l’effetto è quello di una filastrocca, di una “canzonatoria cantilena”.
La scrittura della Burns è secondo me il punto di forza di questo romanzo. Per quanto possa diventare sfiancante se presa a dosi generose, è comunque particolare e speciale.
E cosa avrebbe potuto portare un po’ di luce e di aria fresca nel paese più chiuso, bigotto, triste e squallido del vecchio continente se non le donne, i primi tentativi di creare una cellula femminista, sette donne che si radunano a parlare, bevendo tè e sgranocchiando biscotti, nel capanno del giardino sistemato con mensole cuscini e tendine? In un paese dove la parola “femminista” era inaccettabile. La parola “donna” si sollevava di poco dall’inaccettabilità, solo loro riescono a sparigliare il triste gioco che ha strette regole militari, da branco, ovviamente maschili, se non del tutto proprio macho.
Come i luoghi, che rimangono mai nominati, così accade anche per i personaggi, che però una qualche strana denominazione l’acquistano: l’io narrante protagonista è sorella-di-mezzo, sua madre è ma’, le sorelle e i fratelli vanno in ordine di nascita (da sorella o fratello-numero-uno a scendere), il Lattaio è tale ma si distingue da vero-lattaio, quello che distribuisce davvero il latte, l’Inghilterra è paese-oltre-l’acqua, l’Irlanda è paese-oltre-confine, l’innamorato è forse-fidanzato rispetto al quale anche sorella-di-mezzo diventa forse-fidanzata e insieme hanno una forse-relazione, e avanti di questo passo. Giocando coi prefissi c’è perfino un Qualcuno McQualcuno (Somebody McSomebody).
Il giorno in cui Qualcuno McQualcuno puntò una pistola sul mio seno e mi chiamò gatta e minacciò di spararmi fu lo stesso giorno in cui il Lattaio morì.
Ecco il bell’incipit di questo romanzo, la cui trama si potrebbe sintetizzare come un osceno – osceno perché plateale, insistito, senza vergogna – stalkeraggio nei confronti della diciottenne io narrante: un uomo sposato che ha ventitré anni più di lei, è noto e rispettato come paramilitare e uomo d’azione, la sceglie come preda. Non le mette le mani addosso, ma inizia a tampinarla, ad apparirle accanto in qualsiasi momento, a parlarle, invitarla a salire sulle sue auto sportive, a criticarla perché cammina-leggendo (letteratura dell’Ottocento) o corre nel parco (detto boschi-e-laghi).
Sono avance fatte in pubblico, alla luce del sole. Per tutti la ragazzina diventa l’amante del Lattaio. E come tale, lei troppo giovane, lui sposato e troppo più grande, lei si trasforma in puttanella.
La ragazzina finisce come la preda al centro della ragnatela creata da una cultura del sospetto e del pettegolezzo: avviluppata, bloccata, legata dalle “voci” della gente, dai pettegolezzi, dai “rumour”, processata senza avviso, imputata senza mandato di comparizione, condannata senza appello.
Non serve rivolgersi agli affetti: lei è in torto sia per ma’ – anche perché come potrebbe non esserlo se alla veneranda età di diciotto anni non si è ancora sposata? – che per la migliore amica e confidente.
Cambiate una cosa, miei cari allievi, basta una sola cosa e vi assicuro che anche tutto il resto cambierà
Tra i vari momenti davvero notevoli forse il mio preferito è quando sorella di ragazza-delle-pastiglie ritrova il suo amore, fratello-numero-tre (se non sbaglio il conto).
E dopo la protagonista, ostinata fino ad arrivare a sbattere la testa contro il muro – anche se trattasi di ostinazione che io preferisco chiamare tenacia – ostinata fino a far prudere le mani per la voglia di schiaffeggiarla, ragazzina tenera che mi ha preso il cuore: subito dopo di lei collocherei il cognato-numero-qualcosa (tre?) con il quale la giovane pulzella va a correre a boschi-e-laghi per un numero (vergognoso) di chilometri.
[image error]
Un murale a Belfast.
Quella sera dopo cena, a nove anni, sono uscita per le mie ultime avventure della giornata e sono passata davanti a quello stesso vialetto in cui, come sempre, a quell’ora, erano impilate le molotov per una nuova imminente sommossa del distretto. Non c’era alcuna traccia dei cani morti, benché mi fosse arrivata una folata di quel potente disinfettante, il Jeyes Fluid. Questo non me lo sarei più dimenticato, perché fino a quel momento avevo sempre amato quel particolare odore di casa.
Ricapitolando, i soldati uccidevano i cani, e la gente del posto uccideva i gatti, e ora i gatti venivano anche uccisi dalla Luftwaffe…
Benvenuti nel medioevo prossimo venturo. Benvenuti nell’Afghanistan d’Europa. Benvenuti nel paese più chiuso, bigotto, triste e squallido del vecchio continente. Un posto dove si fatica a vedere altri colori nel cielo oltre l’azzurro, e dove andare a vedere un tramonto ha qualcosa di eversivo.
Per quanto mai davvero specificato, è evidente che il romanzo sia ambientato in una qualche città dell’Irlanda del nord, forse Belfast, negli anni Settanta, nel cosiddetto periodo dei “troubles”, lunga fase pazzesca della lunghissima assurda occupazione britannica, tuttora in piedi in pieno terzo millennio.
Anne Burns rende a meraviglia la claustrofobia che soffoca la città, la piccola nazione, la gente tutta: adotta una lingua unica e originale che mette in bocca alla sua io narrante, mai chiamata per nome.
È una ragazza di diciotto anni, con vari fratelli e sorelle, sia maggiori che minori, sia morti, (morto anche il padre) che vivi. La ragazza parla e racconta e rimugina e riflette con ritmo ripetitivo, insistito, a momenti perfino ossessivo, ma senza mai mettere da parte una leggera ironia che tutto illumina e riscalda. Sì, come è stato fatto notare, l’effetto è quello di una filastrocca, di una “canzonatoria cantilena”.
La scrittura della Burns è secondo me il punto di forza di questo romanzo. Per quanto possa diventare sfiancante se presa a dosi generose, è comunque particolare e speciale.
E cosa avrebbe potuto portare un po’ di luce e di aria fresca nel paese più chiuso, bigotto, triste e squallido del vecchio continente se non le donne, i primi tentativi di creare una cellula femminista, sette donne che si radunano a parlare, bevendo tè e sgranocchiando biscotti, nel capanno del giardino sistemato con mensole cuscini e tendine? In un paese dove la parola “femminista” era inaccettabile. La parola “donna” si sollevava di poco dall’inaccettabilità, solo loro riescono a sparigliare il triste gioco che ha strette regole militari, da branco, ovviamente maschili, se non del tutto proprio macho.
Come i luoghi, che rimangono mai nominati, così accade anche per i personaggi, che però una qualche strana denominazione l’acquistano: l’io narrante protagonista è sorella-di-mezzo, sua madre è ma’, le sorelle e i fratelli vanno in ordine di nascita (da sorella o fratello-numero-uno a scendere), il Lattaio è tale ma si distingue da vero-lattaio, quello che distribuisce davvero il latte, l’Inghilterra è paese-oltre-l’acqua, l’Irlanda è paese-oltre-confine, l’innamorato è forse-fidanzato rispetto al quale anche sorella-di-mezzo diventa forse-fidanzata e insieme hanno una forse-relazione, e avanti di questo passo. Giocando coi prefissi c’è perfino un Qualcuno McQualcuno (Somebody McSomebody).
Il giorno in cui Qualcuno McQualcuno puntò una pistola sul mio seno e mi chiamò gatta e minacciò di spararmi fu lo stesso giorno in cui il Lattaio morì.
Ecco il bell’incipit di questo romanzo, la cui trama si potrebbe sintetizzare come un osceno – osceno perché plateale, insistito, senza vergogna – stalkeraggio nei confronti della diciottenne io narrante: un uomo sposato che ha ventitré anni più di lei, è noto e rispettato come paramilitare e uomo d’azione, la sceglie come preda. Non le mette le mani addosso, ma inizia a tampinarla, ad apparirle accanto in qualsiasi momento, a parlarle, invitarla a salire sulle sue auto sportive, a criticarla perché cammina-leggendo (letteratura dell’Ottocento) o corre nel parco (detto boschi-e-laghi).
Sono avance fatte in pubblico, alla luce del sole. Per tutti la ragazzina diventa l’amante del Lattaio. E come tale, lei troppo giovane, lui sposato e troppo più grande, lei si trasforma in puttanella.
La ragazzina finisce come la preda al centro della ragnatela creata da una cultura del sospetto e del pettegolezzo: avviluppata, bloccata, legata dalle “voci” della gente, dai pettegolezzi, dai “rumour”, processata senza avviso, imputata senza mandato di comparizione, condannata senza appello.
Non serve rivolgersi agli affetti: lei è in torto sia per ma’ – anche perché come potrebbe non esserlo se alla veneranda età di diciotto anni non si è ancora sposata? – che per la migliore amica e confidente.
Cambiate una cosa, miei cari allievi, basta una sola cosa e vi assicuro che anche tutto il resto cambierà
Tra i vari momenti davvero notevoli forse il mio preferito è quando sorella di ragazza-delle-pastiglie ritrova il suo amore, fratello-numero-tre (se non sbaglio il conto).
E dopo la protagonista, ostinata fino ad arrivare a sbattere la testa contro il muro – anche se trattasi di ostinazione che io preferisco chiamare tenacia – ostinata fino a far prudere le mani per la voglia di schiaffeggiarla, ragazzina tenera che mi ha preso il cuore: subito dopo di lei collocherei il cognato-numero-qualcosa (tre?) con il quale la giovane pulzella va a correre a boschi-e-laghi per un numero (vergognoso) di chilometri.
[image error]
Un murale a Belfast.
April 20, 2020
I read and reviewed this novel for BookBrowse.
A satirical novel about coming of age amidst the Troubles, Milkman offers incisive commentary on gender socialization and the pressure to conform during an era of political instability. From the vantage point of the present, the Northern Irish protagonist, the obliquely named "middle sister," narrates the trials she faced as a teenager living in an urban war zone, an inhospitable environment where "you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn't want to." Most notably, upon turning 18, middle sister found herself inexplicably stalked by the eponymous milkman, a lecherous 41-year-old married paramilitary leader who threatened to wreak havoc on her life if she resisted his advances. In spite of the sensational premise, very little happens in terms of plot. The adult narrator instead offers surprisingly droll, verbose reflections on the hardships of having come of age in a place "sunk into one long, melancholic story," where to be "shiny," or noticeable, was to be "bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything." The stream-of-consciousness novel's experimental form won't appeal to everyone, but Burns doubtlessly has crafted an unforgettable tale about what it means to fall below "the benchmark of social regularity" at a time when difference is demonized.
A satirical novel about coming of age amidst the Troubles, Milkman offers incisive commentary on gender socialization and the pressure to conform during an era of political instability. From the vantage point of the present, the Northern Irish protagonist, the obliquely named "middle sister," narrates the trials she faced as a teenager living in an urban war zone, an inhospitable environment where "you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn't want to." Most notably, upon turning 18, middle sister found herself inexplicably stalked by the eponymous milkman, a lecherous 41-year-old married paramilitary leader who threatened to wreak havoc on her life if she resisted his advances. In spite of the sensational premise, very little happens in terms of plot. The adult narrator instead offers surprisingly droll, verbose reflections on the hardships of having come of age in a place "sunk into one long, melancholic story," where to be "shiny," or noticeable, was to be "bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything." The stream-of-consciousness novel's experimental form won't appeal to everyone, but Burns doubtlessly has crafted an unforgettable tale about what it means to fall below "the benchmark of social regularity" at a time when difference is demonized.
January 5, 2023
“Yet they hadn’t married because 3rd brother had gone and done the usual unquestioned, unconscious, self-protective thing. Being loved back by the person he loved to the point where he couldn’t cope anymore with the vulnerable reciprocity of giving and receiving, he ended the relationship to get it over with before he lost it, before it was snatched from him, either by fate or by somebody else.”
Imagine living in an environment that is so dangerous, violent...a war zone...with such political unrest...that you marry ‘wrong wife’ so the one you really love is not put in harms way. This was 1970’s Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”.
“Then again, rarely did I mention anything to anybody. Not mentioning was my way to keep safe.”
Your 18...you read while walking ...you don’t have to acknowledge your fear and paranoia if you are oblivious to your surroundings...you are ‘middle sister’. This makes you different and different makes the ‘renouncers’ suspicious...starts the gossiping...engulfs you in rumors. You need to conform ‘on this side of the road’...the community is watching...everyone is on edge. Perception is everything...
“The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult.”
Imagine the ever increasing sense of darkness...informers...bombings...killings. Not even the dogs were safe. The wonderfully loyal and good dogs...always letting the district know of approaching soldiers. “They got killed all at once...the soldiery from ‘over the water’ slit the district’s dogs’ throats in the middle of one night. They left the dead bodies in a giant heap...the dogs were necessary...a balancing act...a safety buffer...”
“But there was no choice. It was that there was no more alternative. I’ll-equipped I’d been taken into what everybody else from the onset easily had taken in: I was Milkman’s fait accompli all along.”
To think ‘reading while walking’ makes you different. This has brought you to the attention of a renouncer, Milkman. He has become enamoured with you...doesn’t matter that he is married...this is a repressed society...everyone in the community thinks you’re his anyway...you have no choice...you are ‘beyond the pale’...
5 out of 5 stars...brilliant
Imagine living in an environment that is so dangerous, violent...a war zone...with such political unrest...that you marry ‘wrong wife’ so the one you really love is not put in harms way. This was 1970’s Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”.
“Then again, rarely did I mention anything to anybody. Not mentioning was my way to keep safe.”
Your 18...you read while walking ...you don’t have to acknowledge your fear and paranoia if you are oblivious to your surroundings...you are ‘middle sister’. This makes you different and different makes the ‘renouncers’ suspicious...starts the gossiping...engulfs you in rumors. You need to conform ‘on this side of the road’...the community is watching...everyone is on edge. Perception is everything...
“The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult.”
Imagine the ever increasing sense of darkness...informers...bombings...killings. Not even the dogs were safe. The wonderfully loyal and good dogs...always letting the district know of approaching soldiers. “They got killed all at once...the soldiery from ‘over the water’ slit the district’s dogs’ throats in the middle of one night. They left the dead bodies in a giant heap...the dogs were necessary...a balancing act...a safety buffer...”
“But there was no choice. It was that there was no more alternative. I’ll-equipped I’d been taken into what everybody else from the onset easily had taken in: I was Milkman’s fait accompli all along.”
To think ‘reading while walking’ makes you different. This has brought you to the attention of a renouncer, Milkman. He has become enamoured with you...doesn’t matter that he is married...this is a repressed society...everyone in the community thinks you’re his anyway...you have no choice...you are ‘beyond the pale’...
5 out of 5 stars...brilliant
January 5, 2019
"She didn't want the truth. All she wanted was confirmation of the rumour."
This novel consumed me for three days. "Reading-While-Walking", a feature that isolates the main character of Milkman as she faces the mainstream intolerance of her "totalitarian community", was copied by me in a ridiculously literal way, as was the deliberate ignoring of all reality going on outside the pink covers of my book. This novel would not have been the choice of Middle Sister, who preferred to demonstrate her contempt for contemporary political issues by reading only 19th century authors. Actually, it would not have been my choice either, stupidly convinced as I was that the Man Booker is a mediocrity stamp, a badge of dishonour signalling conformity and adjustment rather than "Reading-While-Walking"-absorption into a world so strange, and yet so familiar as to make all else fade.
Why does this novel shine so pink in my head?
It is easy to say why one dislikes certain writing styles, characters or plots. But to turn it all around and explain comprehensively what makes one adore a novel beyond rhyme and reason, that is personal and mysterious.
Middle Sister is haunted by a rigid dystopian Anglo-Saxon society quickly deteriorating into partisan violence and regressive gender roles. She fails to commit fully to the social codes expected of her, and as a result, she is rejected by a community spreading overpowering rumours about her and her alleged association with Milkman, a local gangster who uses his masculine, violent power to force her into a corner where truth doesn't matter:
"I came to understand how much I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion."
By keeping the environment vague, and the characters anonymous, nameless, just indicated by their relationship roles (middle sister, maybe boyfriend, ma), the story becomes universal, and the circumstances transferable to any struggling society.
Violence engenders violence.
Suppression of sexuality engenders religious bigotry and conflict.
Rigid and unequal gender roles suppress individual choices and needs.
Partisanship deletes community building efforts.
Totalitarian rules and regulations destroy intelligent discussions.
But somewhere underneath the surface, human beings continue to hope for passion and meaning. An ex-pious, angry mother can reinvent herself at the age of 50 if she finds something, or someone, to make existence desirable again. Being aware of life and its intricacies can be a quality in itself, even if all seems lost at times.
Middle Sister almost nearly laughed when I left her. I definitely did. What a refreshing, hopeful note to start my reading year on: a pink book full of reflection, wisdom and just plain, simple, good storytelling.
Recommended to those who walk and read!
This novel consumed me for three days. "Reading-While-Walking", a feature that isolates the main character of Milkman as she faces the mainstream intolerance of her "totalitarian community", was copied by me in a ridiculously literal way, as was the deliberate ignoring of all reality going on outside the pink covers of my book. This novel would not have been the choice of Middle Sister, who preferred to demonstrate her contempt for contemporary political issues by reading only 19th century authors. Actually, it would not have been my choice either, stupidly convinced as I was that the Man Booker is a mediocrity stamp, a badge of dishonour signalling conformity and adjustment rather than "Reading-While-Walking"-absorption into a world so strange, and yet so familiar as to make all else fade.
Why does this novel shine so pink in my head?
It is easy to say why one dislikes certain writing styles, characters or plots. But to turn it all around and explain comprehensively what makes one adore a novel beyond rhyme and reason, that is personal and mysterious.
Middle Sister is haunted by a rigid dystopian Anglo-Saxon society quickly deteriorating into partisan violence and regressive gender roles. She fails to commit fully to the social codes expected of her, and as a result, she is rejected by a community spreading overpowering rumours about her and her alleged association with Milkman, a local gangster who uses his masculine, violent power to force her into a corner where truth doesn't matter:
"I came to understand how much I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion."
By keeping the environment vague, and the characters anonymous, nameless, just indicated by their relationship roles (middle sister, maybe boyfriend, ma), the story becomes universal, and the circumstances transferable to any struggling society.
Violence engenders violence.
Suppression of sexuality engenders religious bigotry and conflict.
Rigid and unequal gender roles suppress individual choices and needs.
Partisanship deletes community building efforts.
Totalitarian rules and regulations destroy intelligent discussions.
But somewhere underneath the surface, human beings continue to hope for passion and meaning. An ex-pious, angry mother can reinvent herself at the age of 50 if she finds something, or someone, to make existence desirable again. Being aware of life and its intricacies can be a quality in itself, even if all seems lost at times.
Middle Sister almost nearly laughed when I left her. I definitely did. What a refreshing, hopeful note to start my reading year on: a pink book full of reflection, wisdom and just plain, simple, good storytelling.
Recommended to those who walk and read!
July 30, 2022
Fear has a crushing weight to it. It changes you, bends you into the shape you weren’t meant to be, controls your very existence.
Set in the 1970s Northern Ireland during the Troubles, it gives us a perspective of a young woman in a Renouncer community who has already committed the cardinal offense against expected normality by always reading-while-walking in attempt to keep to herself — and that’s before a local paramilitary leader known as “the Milkman” sets his sights on her and starts stalking her, claiming her in the eyes of the insular community as his mistress, with it isolating her and rewriting her life in the eyes of others while she’s powerless to stop it, turning her “into a carefully constructed nothingness”.
In this insular, tribalist, oppressive world everything is political, even the smallest everyday things. The smallest mundanities, the tiniest slip-up will mark you as belonging to “us” or “them” — a hospital visit, a name, a store you shop in. Paramilitaries, unionists, nationalists, religious clashes, car bombs, vigilante justice, raids, curfews — all of that determines life rhythms and order. But just as much do the other things, the internal policing people do of themselves, the pervasive oppressive gossip and rumors that rule lives, the lack of privacy in communities where everything is everyone’s business, the strict customs and rampant accepted patriarchy and harassment, the strict roles one is expected to perform, the crushing weight of social pressure that is apt to quickly isolate those who dare to not conform and therefore are relegated to “beyond-the-pale” category.
It’s an odd book, written in wall-to-wall text and seemingly endless sentences in a strangely stylized narrative voice that often slides into an oddly stilted formality, skips any personal names (“middle sister”, “third brother-in-law”, “maybe-boyfriend” are the identifiers here, with the closest to a name we come is Somebody McSomebody), uses dry almost-humor in which even absurd situations still remain heartbreakingly painfully real. It’s satirical, but in a seriously so, the way that almost brings helpless tears to the eyes at the horrific absurdity that reality can be.
It’s a hard to read book, and yet something about it grabbed me and didn’t let go. And that possibly hint of hope in the end, of changes, of lessening fear, of letting go of protective numbness and daring to try to find joy even in bleak times, of a breath of fresh air even on the most suffocating day.
4 stars. You’ll love it or hate it — and for me it hit the right (although uncomfortable) spot.
—————
Recommended by Nastya.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
“Life here, said real milkman, simply has to be lived and died in extremes.”Although I’ve seen it described as darkly funny, to me this book was quietly angry. Angry at the crushing and bleak oppressiveness and claustrophobia of the world described, the world of judgmental gossip, habitual violence, enforced conformity and resigned fatalism. And above all that, the fear and distrust that govern the lives there, split along the stark lines of “us” and “them”, and the trauma of it all.
“It was being rumoured that way, he said, because that was the thing people invented here because you couldn’t just die here, couldn’t have an ordinary death here, not anymore, not of natural causes, not by accident such as falling out a window, especially not after all the other violent deaths taking place in this district now. It had to be political, he said. Had to be about the border, meaning comprehensible.”
Set in the 1970s Northern Ireland during the Troubles, it gives us a perspective of a young woman in a Renouncer community who has already committed the cardinal offense against expected normality by always reading-while-walking in attempt to keep to herself — and that’s before a local paramilitary leader known as “the Milkman” sets his sights on her and starts stalking her, claiming her in the eyes of the insular community as his mistress, with it isolating her and rewriting her life in the eyes of others while she’s powerless to stop it, turning her “into a carefully constructed nothingness”.
“At the time, age eighteen, having been brought up in a hair-trigger society where the ground rules were – if no physically violent touch was being laid upon you, and no outright verbal insults were being levelled at you, and no taunting looks in the vicinity either, then nothing was happening, so how could you be under attack from something that wasn’t there? At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment. I had a feeling for them, an intuition, a sense of repugnance for some situations and some people, but I did not know intuition and repugnance counted, did not know I had a right not to like, not to have to put up with, anybody and everybody coming near.”
In this insular, tribalist, oppressive world everything is political, even the smallest everyday things. The smallest mundanities, the tiniest slip-up will mark you as belonging to “us” or “them” — a hospital visit, a name, a store you shop in. Paramilitaries, unionists, nationalists, religious clashes, car bombs, vigilante justice, raids, curfews — all of that determines life rhythms and order. But just as much do the other things, the internal policing people do of themselves, the pervasive oppressive gossip and rumors that rule lives, the lack of privacy in communities where everything is everyone’s business, the strict customs and rampant accepted patriarchy and harassment, the strict roles one is expected to perform, the crushing weight of social pressure that is apt to quickly isolate those who dare to not conform and therefore are relegated to “beyond-the-pale” category.
“‘Us’ and ‘them’ was second nature: convenient, familiar, insider, and these words were off-the-cuff, without the strain of having to remember and grapple with massaged phrases or diplomatically correct niceties.”
It’s an odd book, written in wall-to-wall text and seemingly endless sentences in a strangely stylized narrative voice that often slides into an oddly stilted formality, skips any personal names (“middle sister”, “third brother-in-law”, “maybe-boyfriend” are the identifiers here, with the closest to a name we come is Somebody McSomebody), uses dry almost-humor in which even absurd situations still remain heartbreakingly painfully real. It’s satirical, but in a seriously so, the way that almost brings helpless tears to the eyes at the horrific absurdity that reality can be.
“Also, in a district that thrived on suspicion, supposition and imprecision, where everything was so back-to-front it was impossible to tell a story properly, or not tell it but just remain quiet, nothing could get said here or not said but it was turned into gospel.”
It’s a hard to read book, and yet something about it grabbed me and didn’t let go. And that possibly hint of hope in the end, of changes, of lessening fear, of letting go of protective numbness and daring to try to find joy even in bleak times, of a breath of fresh air even on the most suffocating day.
“The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult.”
4 stars. You’ll love it or hate it — and for me it hit the right (although uncomfortable) spot.
—————
Recommended by Nastya.
——————
Also posted on my blog.
September 10, 2019
The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died. He had been shot by one of the state hit squads and I did not care about the shooting of this man.
And so it begins – one of the most extraordinary novels I’ve ever read. I got what I call “the giddiness” early on, but gave myself a talking down to not get ahead of myself, because really, can anyone sustain such a high level of interestingness for three hundred plus pages?
Written in the first person, through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old, who refers to herself as the middle sister, Milkman is very original. The setting is an unnamed place, somewhere in Northern Ireland during the 1970's Troubles.
The characters in this novel don’t have names, in the traditional way, but they are easily recognisable, I never got confused.
Speaking of characters, they're interesting, diverse and unusual. There’s Milkman who’s not really a milk man, he’s married, forty and he’s taken to stalking our protagonist. There’s also the real milkman who delivers milk and is also a friend of the family. There’s a maybe-boyfriend because they’re having a maybe-relationship. There’s ma who’s pious, hardened by life and who doesn’t trust our protagonist; pa, who had suffered from mental health issues, is dead now. The wee sisters are eight, nine and ten, they’re extremely intelligent and always together. There’s Somebody McSomebody who stalks her and can’t accept that she’s not interested. There’s the third brother in law, a man who’s in awe of women and who’s a compulsive runner, just like our protagonist. There’s even an issues women group aka the feminists. There’s the renouncers or those who take the republican side; there’s also a more vague category the beyond-the-pales those who society have deemed too different.
Our protagonist is apolitical, so much so, she takes refuge in reading mostly nineteen century literature. She’s trying her best to go unnoticed. She’s not pro or against anything. She doesn’t like to gossip, but that doesn’t stop others gossiping about her. People are put off by her walking and reading. Also, they think she’s the Milkman’s mistress. The absurdity of it all compels her to keep quiet, why have to explain herself and deny something that’s untrue? When she finally denies it, nobody believes her, not even her ma. Life becomes hell for the middle sister, as she joins the ranks of the beyond the pale.
Milkman is a dense novel, with some of the longest paragraphs I’ve ever read (with perfect punctuation, kudos to Ms Burns and/or editors). It’s both very readable and hard work. This was the closest I’ve ever come to completing/staying with a mindfulness exercise (in case you can’t tell from my all-over-the-place, unedited reviews, I have a very ADD brain). I didn’t mind taking my time with this novel, as I wanted to savour every line, turn of phrase, tangent and thought bubble. The writing is exquisite, playful, smart, insightful and all together bonkers, in a good way. The times were bonkers. The constant surveillance, suspicion, the imminence of death, affect everything and everyone. Everything is seen as a political statement. What you do and don’t do is labelled. There’s no escaping. The sense of self is easily eroded.
There’s so much to ponder and unpack. I am gobsmacked by this novel’s originality and complexity. I loved living in the eighteen-year old’s head. She may have come across as aloof and impenetrable, but she saw and understood more than anyone around. I even related to certain situations, despite having a different nationality. Somehow, in spite of the serious themes and undercurrents, this novel was quite amusing at times, not the slapstick kind of funny, but the kind derived from the absurdity of situations and people’s reactions.
This is where I gush about the importance of awards, especially for literary fiction, which seems to have become a niche genre. I read somewhere that each of the Man Booker short-listed novels sold less than six thousand copies in the UK. Had it not been for the Man Booker Prize, I, like many others, would have never come across this incredible novel. That would have been a shame.
Ms Burns, I take a bow and thank you for the words.
And so it begins – one of the most extraordinary novels I’ve ever read. I got what I call “the giddiness” early on, but gave myself a talking down to not get ahead of myself, because really, can anyone sustain such a high level of interestingness for three hundred plus pages?
Written in the first person, through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old, who refers to herself as the middle sister, Milkman is very original. The setting is an unnamed place, somewhere in Northern Ireland during the 1970's Troubles.
The characters in this novel don’t have names, in the traditional way, but they are easily recognisable, I never got confused.
Speaking of characters, they're interesting, diverse and unusual. There’s Milkman who’s not really a milk man, he’s married, forty and he’s taken to stalking our protagonist. There’s also the real milkman who delivers milk and is also a friend of the family. There’s a maybe-boyfriend because they’re having a maybe-relationship. There’s ma who’s pious, hardened by life and who doesn’t trust our protagonist; pa, who had suffered from mental health issues, is dead now. The wee sisters are eight, nine and ten, they’re extremely intelligent and always together. There’s Somebody McSomebody who stalks her and can’t accept that she’s not interested. There’s the third brother in law, a man who’s in awe of women and who’s a compulsive runner, just like our protagonist. There’s even an issues women group aka the feminists. There’s the renouncers or those who take the republican side; there’s also a more vague category the beyond-the-pales those who society have deemed too different.
Our protagonist is apolitical, so much so, she takes refuge in reading mostly nineteen century literature. She’s trying her best to go unnoticed. She’s not pro or against anything. She doesn’t like to gossip, but that doesn’t stop others gossiping about her. People are put off by her walking and reading. Also, they think she’s the Milkman’s mistress. The absurdity of it all compels her to keep quiet, why have to explain herself and deny something that’s untrue? When she finally denies it, nobody believes her, not even her ma. Life becomes hell for the middle sister, as she joins the ranks of the beyond the pale.
Milkman is a dense novel, with some of the longest paragraphs I’ve ever read (with perfect punctuation, kudos to Ms Burns and/or editors). It’s both very readable and hard work. This was the closest I’ve ever come to completing/staying with a mindfulness exercise (in case you can’t tell from my all-over-the-place, unedited reviews, I have a very ADD brain). I didn’t mind taking my time with this novel, as I wanted to savour every line, turn of phrase, tangent and thought bubble. The writing is exquisite, playful, smart, insightful and all together bonkers, in a good way. The times were bonkers. The constant surveillance, suspicion, the imminence of death, affect everything and everyone. Everything is seen as a political statement. What you do and don’t do is labelled. There’s no escaping. The sense of self is easily eroded.
There’s so much to ponder and unpack. I am gobsmacked by this novel’s originality and complexity. I loved living in the eighteen-year old’s head. She may have come across as aloof and impenetrable, but she saw and understood more than anyone around. I even related to certain situations, despite having a different nationality. Somehow, in spite of the serious themes and undercurrents, this novel was quite amusing at times, not the slapstick kind of funny, but the kind derived from the absurdity of situations and people’s reactions.
This is where I gush about the importance of awards, especially for literary fiction, which seems to have become a niche genre. I read somewhere that each of the Man Booker short-listed novels sold less than six thousand copies in the UK. Had it not been for the Man Booker Prize, I, like many others, would have never come across this incredible novel. That would have been a shame.
Ms Burns, I take a bow and thank you for the words.
September 5, 2019
Sorry folks, I’m calling it quits on the Milkman.
DNF at 100 pages.
I have not read a lot of Man Booker prize winners so I can’t determine if it’s this book, or it’s the actual category itself. I’m more then willing to read other winners in the future to figure this out.
But back to the book.
I was hoping it would get better because it’s set in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”. It’s not the plot. I love to read anything set in Ireland or the UK. This period during Northern Ireland has always been an interest to me.
It was the writing.
It was a struggle to pick up this book and just read 10-20 pages.
The writing format is in first person, but it rambles.
Like a lot.
And the lack of where the main character was going, thinking or doing just got too much.
It felt like Anna Burns just wrote everything that came up in her head during this time in Northern Ireland and turned it into a hot mess. There was no formula or pattern for it, and that would have helped me in liking this book more.
I think the Milkman will be a love/hate book for many.
Maybe that’s why it won the Man Booker prize because of the ramblin’, bamblin’ disconnected sentences and lack of names for the characters? Because it was edgy and different?
I just didn’t care for the main character though, or maybe-boyfriend, or Middle Sister, or Somebody McSomething, or anyone. Good grief.
I don’t know why it won but I didn’t enjoy it.
I read for entertainment and when it comes down to it, that’s what I base my decisions on.
I just didn’t get this with the Milkman.
NEXT!
DNF at 100 pages.
I have not read a lot of Man Booker prize winners so I can’t determine if it’s this book, or it’s the actual category itself. I’m more then willing to read other winners in the future to figure this out.
But back to the book.
I was hoping it would get better because it’s set in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”. It’s not the plot. I love to read anything set in Ireland or the UK. This period during Northern Ireland has always been an interest to me.
It was the writing.
It was a struggle to pick up this book and just read 10-20 pages.
The writing format is in first person, but it rambles.
Like a lot.
And the lack of where the main character was going, thinking or doing just got too much.
It felt like Anna Burns just wrote everything that came up in her head during this time in Northern Ireland and turned it into a hot mess. There was no formula or pattern for it, and that would have helped me in liking this book more.
I think the Milkman will be a love/hate book for many.
Maybe that’s why it won the Man Booker prize because of the ramblin’, bamblin’ disconnected sentences and lack of names for the characters? Because it was edgy and different?
I just didn’t care for the main character though, or maybe-boyfriend, or Middle Sister, or Somebody McSomething, or anyone. Good grief.
I don’t know why it won but I didn’t enjoy it.
I read for entertainment and when it comes down to it, that’s what I base my decisions on.
I just didn’t get this with the Milkman.
NEXT!
February 8, 2020
This book was tough on me. So I’m quite divided on the rating. Winner of the Man Booker prize 2018, shortlisted for the women’s prize for fiction 2019. And more. Lots of outstanding reviews here on goodreads and by the renowned magazines and papers. But also some with the same feelings as I, I see. So I started it and really had a hard time reading through these dense pages without stops and going on and on about the same topic page after the page. But, I really like a challenge 😊. Long story short: this book really needs your full focus. A bit further on I got into the story and it grew on me. And yes, it is even funny at times, although dark and disturbing too. When you focus on it and get through those dense pages, it is very worthwhile, fascinating, intriguing. What can I say...For now 3.4 rating but I have to think I have to think.... this is such a tough one. I'm torn up by this book. Because I sort of loved the out of the box telling of this young woman, loved her character, her independence and her doubts, love her family and her wee sisters, her maybe-boyfriend, the threatening stalking Milkman, the real Milkman that mum has fallen in love with, all in 'the Troubles' times in Northern Ireland. Who can make it up. Have to think, be back for more. And.. Thanks Apoorva for reading this book with me, sharing the challenge, the thoughts and the frowns, I think you rated this lower than I did. I loved reading with you and we will soon be reading the next together! Goodreads friends, want to share a book reading with me? I love it! You can also find me on instagram, abpg1. Now I think this review has become pretty dense too :-)
Final remark: I'm thinking it must be the author's or publisher's strategy, this dense going on and on layout, but could it not have been done with a bit more space, a line of white here and there... a break, after a paragraph? Stupid remark maybe ;-).
Afterword: I was in Edinburgh for a couple of days last weekend, intent to finish Milkman and leave the book in the hotel for the next reader, I do that regularly. However... this book made me decide to put it back in my suitcase and take it home again. Have to reread this one, and it's good that I did this because it has been on my mind, this story, for the last week! OK closure for now: let's do a quote finally, always love to quote a book to sort of try and grasp the character of it:
So I was heard, and it felt good and respectful to be heard, to be got, not to be interrupted or cut off by opinionated, poorly attuned people. For the longest while longest friend didn't say anything and I didn't mind her not saying anything. Indeed I welcomed it. ... So she stayed quiet and stayed still and looked ahead and it was then for the first time it struck me that this staring into the middle distance, which often she'd do when we'd meet, was identical to that of Milkman. ... Was this some 'profile display stance' then, that they all learn at their paramilitary finishing schools? As I was pondering this, longest friend then did speak. Without turning, she said 'I understand your not wanting to talk. That makes sense, and how could it not, now that you're considered a community beyond-the-pale.' This I was not expecting and at once thought I could not have heard properly. 'What did you say'... 'That can't be right', I said, but longest friend sighed and here she did turn towards me. 'You brought it on yourself, longest friend. I informed you and informed you. I meant for the longest time ever since primary I've been warning you to kill that habit you insist on and that I now suspect you're addicted to - that reading in public as you're walking about.' 'But'- I said. 'Not natural', she said... 'Unnerving behaviour', she said. .... 'but too late. The community has pronounced its diagnosis on you now'.
Final remark: I'm thinking it must be the author's or publisher's strategy, this dense going on and on layout, but could it not have been done with a bit more space, a line of white here and there... a break, after a paragraph? Stupid remark maybe ;-).
Afterword: I was in Edinburgh for a couple of days last weekend, intent to finish Milkman and leave the book in the hotel for the next reader, I do that regularly. However... this book made me decide to put it back in my suitcase and take it home again. Have to reread this one, and it's good that I did this because it has been on my mind, this story, for the last week! OK closure for now: let's do a quote finally, always love to quote a book to sort of try and grasp the character of it:
So I was heard, and it felt good and respectful to be heard, to be got, not to be interrupted or cut off by opinionated, poorly attuned people. For the longest while longest friend didn't say anything and I didn't mind her not saying anything. Indeed I welcomed it. ... So she stayed quiet and stayed still and looked ahead and it was then for the first time it struck me that this staring into the middle distance, which often she'd do when we'd meet, was identical to that of Milkman. ... Was this some 'profile display stance' then, that they all learn at their paramilitary finishing schools? As I was pondering this, longest friend then did speak. Without turning, she said 'I understand your not wanting to talk. That makes sense, and how could it not, now that you're considered a community beyond-the-pale.' This I was not expecting and at once thought I could not have heard properly. 'What did you say'... 'That can't be right', I said, but longest friend sighed and here she did turn towards me. 'You brought it on yourself, longest friend. I informed you and informed you. I meant for the longest time ever since primary I've been warning you to kill that habit you insist on and that I now suspect you're addicted to - that reading in public as you're walking about.' 'But'- I said. 'Not natural', she said... 'Unnerving behaviour', she said. .... 'but too late. The community has pronounced its diagnosis on you now'.
Read
January 16, 2021I heard that you're on Booker Longlist
That you're a strong favourite, solid now
I heard, that you're a dystopia
I guess you'd gave me things
Like others did to me
Good book, why sentences so long
Either finish the sentence
Or start a paragraph
I hate to DNF you like this, early unexpected but I
Couldn't keep reading, couldn't fight it
I had hoped you see my face
And that you let me go, tell me it's over
Nevermind, I'll go find some book like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Forget me, I will forget you,
Sometimes it lasts when reading sometimes it HURTS instead...
Just not my cup of tea! Sorry...Thanks and sorry Adele...
full review on my blog
That you're a strong favourite, solid now
I heard, that you're a dystopia
I guess you'd gave me things
Like others did to me
Good book, why sentences so long
Either finish the sentence
Or start a paragraph
I hate to DNF you like this, early unexpected but I
Couldn't keep reading, couldn't fight it
I had hoped you see my face
And that you let me go, tell me it's over
Nevermind, I'll go find some book like you
I wish nothing but the best for you
Forget me, I will forget you,
Sometimes it lasts when reading sometimes it HURTS instead...
Just not my cup of tea! Sorry...Thanks and sorry Adele...
full review on my blog
October 30, 2019
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018
Life here, said real milkman, simply has to be lived and died in extremes.
Northern Ireland. Unnamed Belfast. The Troubles. 1970s. A young woman navigates the violent and all-consuming political conflict by trying to steer clear of it, having contrived to shut off herself, emotionally and intellectually, from the sordid reality of her surroundings. She is shaken out of her somnolence when a paramilitary leader, the eponymous Milkman, ostensibly develops an amorous interest in her. And there ensues a whirlwind of incidents that, against her will, pulls her into the limelight and pits her against the power centres of society. The narrator recounts her experience and the emotional toll it took on her to pass through the ordeal and come out the other end, bruised and battered.
The picture that emerges is of a dystopia wherein gossip, mistrust, and paranoia metamorphose into undeniable truths in what then becomes an increasingly fictitious world that is masquerading as harsh reality in which everyone has to play their set part at any and all cost, which in turn fuels and perpetuates the very conflict which had engendered it. This cyclical and chaotic nature of reality is skillfully rendered in the narrative voice which is itself unordered, meandering, circuitous, repetitive and at times self-referential. It is the kind of book whose reception depends mainly or solely on how well one receives the narrative voice.
Anna Burns has managed to avoid the pitfalls of the recycled novel with the choice of her style, which isn’t really as experimental and groundbreakingly new as it's been made out to be in the press, but a loosely held interior monologue with an oral - or aural - quality, as though the story is being related to a group of listeners. It does feel odd now and then, but not odd enough to cause any difficulty to the reader.
But more important is how the stylistic choice is made to work to convey the personal and the intimate and as well as the sociopolitical dynamics of that place at that time; and also the extent to which the banal and tedious details of politics are creatively passed on to the reader through that stylistic choice. The descriptive identifiers for various groups cleverly delineate and depict the social and political faultlines, i.e; intercommuncal violence, sectarian killings, oppressive conventions, social taboos, misuse of power for non-political ends etc whilst keeping us close to the heart of the narrator.
From general and easily-understood euphemisms like renouncers, defenders, the country over the border, the country across the water to more specific ones like "groupie women" for militants’ paramours, "issue women" for newly rising feminism in the area, "beyond-the-pale ones" for misfits that defy rules and refuse to conform to strict convention etc - all this worked to keep my interest in the story which I might otherwise have lost if told with a more politically overt commentary.
No attempt is made to maintain verisimilitude in dialogue. Character voices are indistinguishable from one another, which takes away from the authenticity of direct speech. The narrator is deliberately reporting “altered speech” to create effect and highlight the craziness of the situation, but not without a good deal of humour. For example when ma assumes the narrator to be pregnant she says, 'Have you been fecundated by him, by that renouncer,' ... , 'imbued by him,' she elaborated. 'Engendered in. Breeded in. Fertilised, vexed, embarrassed, sprinkled, caused to feel regret, wished not to have happened - dear God, child, do I have to spell it out?' Well, why didn't she spell it out? Why couldn't she just say pregnant?”
This shows her reluctance to discuss a taboo matter directly but this line is written so to highlight that fact and couldn’t have spoken by the mother as direct speech, even if it is reported as such, in quotation marks, if we keep her previous speech patterns and working class background in mind. Similarly, there are lines said by wee sisters that show their curious minds but that's not how children speak. As one wee sister tells our narrator, “Somebody for you called maybe-boyfriend rang up,” or when the narrator tells maybe-boyfriend, “Stop the car on this deserted interface road immediately." This a small sample of the roundabout, ridiculous, and funny pronouncements peppered throughout the book.
Oftentimes the story reads like a testament to the resilience of the people to maintain a semblance of normalcy to their surroundings against all odds, such as when disenfranchised groups step up and intervene when things threaten to breakdown into total madness, or into more total madness. Groups of women, otherwise conservative housewives sick of the curfews, a random band of women at the drinking-club, or the “issue women,” – all these spring into action from time to time to rein in things and assert their right to have a say at great personal risk.
It is difficult to ignore the discordance caused by the sudden shifts of register throughout the narrative. For instance, in-between informal, repetitive, and less-than-perfect usage of standard words, as well as in dialogue, one gets to read erudite and high-flying sentences like, “I added there’d been a synchronicity to it, a sense of providence, a deftness, some cosmic comeuppance easily to be described as pure alchemical process.” followed by, on the same page, 'Not necessary,' I said. 'Still,' he said. 'Ach nothing,' he said. 'Ach sure,' I said. 'Ach sure what?' he said. 'Ach sure, if that's how you feel.' 'Ach sure, of course that's how I feel.' 'Ach, all right then,' he said... and it goes on. But I did not find this to lessen my enjoyment of the story.
Much has been said about its supposed difficulty but it’s not any more difficult than your - by now - regular stream of consciousness novels. On comparison with other such novels, such as another Booker winner, The Gathering, this novel felt like a relatively easy read. Yes, it's unconventional, but not impenetrable. I have also seen it said that it's difficult to understand if you're not Irish or native English speaker. This is patent falsehood. As a non-native English speaker as well as non-Irish, I had no more difficulty understanding the language or the literary and sociocultural references than I had, say, in Ian McEwan's novels. I did not need to google anything besides "jamais vu" (because it's French and I don't know French), and informal terms like "supergrass" and why would someone say "gee-whizz" instead of "Jesus." It wouldn't have made any difference anyway had I not looked them up. So perhaps we need to refashion the question to purpose and ask, "Who's Afraid of Anna Burns?"
October '18
Life here, said real milkman, simply has to be lived and died in extremes.
Northern Ireland. Unnamed Belfast. The Troubles. 1970s. A young woman navigates the violent and all-consuming political conflict by trying to steer clear of it, having contrived to shut off herself, emotionally and intellectually, from the sordid reality of her surroundings. She is shaken out of her somnolence when a paramilitary leader, the eponymous Milkman, ostensibly develops an amorous interest in her. And there ensues a whirlwind of incidents that, against her will, pulls her into the limelight and pits her against the power centres of society. The narrator recounts her experience and the emotional toll it took on her to pass through the ordeal and come out the other end, bruised and battered.
The picture that emerges is of a dystopia wherein gossip, mistrust, and paranoia metamorphose into undeniable truths in what then becomes an increasingly fictitious world that is masquerading as harsh reality in which everyone has to play their set part at any and all cost, which in turn fuels and perpetuates the very conflict which had engendered it. This cyclical and chaotic nature of reality is skillfully rendered in the narrative voice which is itself unordered, meandering, circuitous, repetitive and at times self-referential. It is the kind of book whose reception depends mainly or solely on how well one receives the narrative voice.
Anna Burns has managed to avoid the pitfalls of the recycled novel with the choice of her style, which isn’t really as experimental and groundbreakingly new as it's been made out to be in the press, but a loosely held interior monologue with an oral - or aural - quality, as though the story is being related to a group of listeners. It does feel odd now and then, but not odd enough to cause any difficulty to the reader.
But more important is how the stylistic choice is made to work to convey the personal and the intimate and as well as the sociopolitical dynamics of that place at that time; and also the extent to which the banal and tedious details of politics are creatively passed on to the reader through that stylistic choice. The descriptive identifiers for various groups cleverly delineate and depict the social and political faultlines, i.e; intercommuncal violence, sectarian killings, oppressive conventions, social taboos, misuse of power for non-political ends etc whilst keeping us close to the heart of the narrator.
From general and easily-understood euphemisms like renouncers, defenders, the country over the border, the country across the water to more specific ones like "groupie women" for militants’ paramours, "issue women" for newly rising feminism in the area, "beyond-the-pale ones" for misfits that defy rules and refuse to conform to strict convention etc - all this worked to keep my interest in the story which I might otherwise have lost if told with a more politically overt commentary.
No attempt is made to maintain verisimilitude in dialogue. Character voices are indistinguishable from one another, which takes away from the authenticity of direct speech. The narrator is deliberately reporting “altered speech” to create effect and highlight the craziness of the situation, but not without a good deal of humour. For example when ma assumes the narrator to be pregnant she says, 'Have you been fecundated by him, by that renouncer,' ... , 'imbued by him,' she elaborated. 'Engendered in. Breeded in. Fertilised, vexed, embarrassed, sprinkled, caused to feel regret, wished not to have happened - dear God, child, do I have to spell it out?' Well, why didn't she spell it out? Why couldn't she just say pregnant?”
This shows her reluctance to discuss a taboo matter directly but this line is written so to highlight that fact and couldn’t have spoken by the mother as direct speech, even if it is reported as such, in quotation marks, if we keep her previous speech patterns and working class background in mind. Similarly, there are lines said by wee sisters that show their curious minds but that's not how children speak. As one wee sister tells our narrator, “Somebody for you called maybe-boyfriend rang up,” or when the narrator tells maybe-boyfriend, “Stop the car on this deserted interface road immediately." This a small sample of the roundabout, ridiculous, and funny pronouncements peppered throughout the book.
Oftentimes the story reads like a testament to the resilience of the people to maintain a semblance of normalcy to their surroundings against all odds, such as when disenfranchised groups step up and intervene when things threaten to breakdown into total madness, or into more total madness. Groups of women, otherwise conservative housewives sick of the curfews, a random band of women at the drinking-club, or the “issue women,” – all these spring into action from time to time to rein in things and assert their right to have a say at great personal risk.
It is difficult to ignore the discordance caused by the sudden shifts of register throughout the narrative. For instance, in-between informal, repetitive, and less-than-perfect usage of standard words, as well as in dialogue, one gets to read erudite and high-flying sentences like, “I added there’d been a synchronicity to it, a sense of providence, a deftness, some cosmic comeuppance easily to be described as pure alchemical process.” followed by, on the same page, 'Not necessary,' I said. 'Still,' he said. 'Ach nothing,' he said. 'Ach sure,' I said. 'Ach sure what?' he said. 'Ach sure, if that's how you feel.' 'Ach sure, of course that's how I feel.' 'Ach, all right then,' he said... and it goes on. But I did not find this to lessen my enjoyment of the story.
Much has been said about its supposed difficulty but it’s not any more difficult than your - by now - regular stream of consciousness novels. On comparison with other such novels, such as another Booker winner, The Gathering, this novel felt like a relatively easy read. Yes, it's unconventional, but not impenetrable. I have also seen it said that it's difficult to understand if you're not Irish or native English speaker. This is patent falsehood. As a non-native English speaker as well as non-Irish, I had no more difficulty understanding the language or the literary and sociocultural references than I had, say, in Ian McEwan's novels. I did not need to google anything besides "jamais vu" (because it's French and I don't know French), and informal terms like "supergrass" and why would someone say "gee-whizz" instead of "Jesus." It wouldn't have made any difference anyway had I not looked them up. So perhaps we need to refashion the question to purpose and ask, "Who's Afraid of Anna Burns?"
October '18
January 27, 2020
Reread for a growing up course this Spring 2020, after rereading a second time last summer with a group of students. One of my very favorite books of 2019, and loved it again in 2020! I'll edit my review just a tad and add some notes at the end of the review to reflect my recent reading.
“’Still,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach nothing,' he said. 'Ach sure,' I said. 'Ach sure what?' he said. 'Ach sure, if that's how you feel.' 'Ach sure, of course that's how I feel.' 'Ach all right then.' 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach.'
So that was settled.”
I almost never read Big Prize-winners close to the time of their winning, though I did read George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo in less than a year from its publication date (and loved it) and I did the same with this book, also loving it. This might be the beginning of a trend for me! The book won the 2018 Man Booker prize and it is on the whole exhilarating to read. It's pretty long, 350 pages, but it's worth it; Anna Burns here reads like a refreshingly new voice, in a tone that was initially difficult for me to pick up, until I began listening to the fantastic audiotaped version by Brid Brennan, who is Irish and captures the deadpanned tone running through it. At first it just seemed like a kind of growing-up story with fresh language. Then something like black comedy. So I'll call it tragi-comedy, with real life horror and hilarity, in the guise of a kind of coming-of-age story in first person told by an unnamed 18-year-old woman whom we get to know only as middle sister.
The town would seem to be some northern Ireland town, say Belfast, where Burns grew up, but it is not named, the country is not named, the opposing factions and countries in conflict are never named, and no characters are named. Instead, we meet maybe boyfriend, ma, wee sisters, eldest sister, first brother-in-law, of course Milkman, another guy named real milkman, tablets girl, Somebody McSomebody and throughout we alternately laugh or are terrified, or laugh AS we are being terrified as middle sister tells her story.
Well, certainly this town, and this “hair trigger society,” she describes was inspired by Burns’s Belfast, as she said: “I grew up in a place that was rife with violence, distrust and paranoia, and peopled by individuals trying to navigate and survive in that world as best as they could.”
The novel begins: “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died,” and it is more than 300 pages until we see what this sentence fully means.
The story takes place in the seventies, in the particularly violent time of The Troubles, with car bombs, informants, renouncers, and so on. “It was revenge and counter-revenge,” middle sister writes, “reeling and spinning.” Also a time when working-class people would not acknowledge depression or “the psychological,” as in the severe depression suffered by da. A time when feminism would be seen by the local women as akin to Communism or satanism. As middle sister--who narrates the story from the decades ago she experienced these events--seems to have it, an interest in/obsession with James Bond movies in part informs the macho-psychotic paramilitary impulses with which males engage just as images of move starlets influence the fashion choices of girls and women (with perhaps more damaging effects to the world due to the male obsessions). We never hear in the book of a particular political conversation that drives the violence. It’s all just threats and surveillance and harassing and killing “suspected” people. And the slaughter of cats and dogs, too, beware. There’s a layer here, too, of socio-sexual commentary, as terror/sexual harassment links to politics, informs relationships, especially ones for middle sister involving maybe boyfriend and Milkman and Somebody McSomebody.
So how does middle sister become a person of interest, undergoing surveillance, gossip, threat? She is seen, in public, reading books as she walks! Nineteenth-century books such as Ivanhoe! Do normal people do this?! And in a time of political violence? This is how we—Burns’s readers—come in, because WE would do this, so we begin to care a little about middle-sister, she becomes us to some extent. (Note: I listened to this audiobook while doing a lot of walking! Am I a crazy person, too?!) Middle sister is reserved, a bit of an introvert, she doesn’t want to get involved in politics, it's al insane, she has a first and “maybe” boyfriend she isn’t particularly involved with, she's not understood by her family, she doesn’t have any close friends, and yet when she’s out walking, Milkman stops his van to talk with her and makes it clear that she has now—to him? according to others?—become a person of interest—is it sexual interest? Political interest? Both?
Middle sister is young, might we say on the cusp of adulthood? She doesn't really fully engage with all the madness, doesn't always seem to fully acknowledge the threat Milkman poses for her politically and sexually:
“At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment.”
Her mother and the whole neighborhood become aware when Milkman stops to talk periodically with middle sister, and the rumors and gossip that follow lead to strange, absurd conclusions about her. Denial is futile for her; it's clear to them she's just lying in her denials of any relationship. It all gets increasingly hysterical, Monty Python or Kafka level:
“Next came abortions and I had to guess them also, from ‘vermifuge, squaw mint, Satan’s apple, premature expulsion, being failed in the course of coming into being’ with any doubt dispelled by, ‘Well, daughter, you can’t disappoint me anymore than you’ve already disappointed me, so tell me –what did you procure and which of them drab aunts did you procure it of?”
But how does middle sister really respond to the attentions of Milkman?
“I did not like the milkman and had been frightened and confused by his pursuing and attempting an affair with me,” middle sister says. “I would be startled by every encounter, except the last, I was to have with this man.” But no one believes her! Instead, they blame her for luring him away from his poor wife.
Either way, to be “of interest” in a time of violent conflict is dangerous. We know this because people in middle sister’s family have been killed, seen as connecting with the other side, as having the wrong politics. And then middle sister appears to behave in a way that morally calls attention to herself, having a relationship with maybe boyfriend who doesn't live in the district, with whom she "stays over" while not being married, and then she's talking to a married man while walking, and so on.
Middle sister isn’t always sympathetic—Why doesn’t she talk about her real issues with maybe boyfriend? Why does she shut down rather than clearly confront her mother and the neighbor women about Milkman? To her credit, she tries sometimes to defend herself, but she sometimes doesn't yet know what she thinks about things, and sometimes when she talks they just call her a liar, so it takes some time for her to find her way through this morass of gossip and harassment and danger amid her own vulnerable confusion and silence.
"I came to understand how much I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion."
At one point we are relieved as in a bar middle sister tells her former best friend the whole story, but are horrified as we understand this "friend" doesn't believe a word she says, and like the others, blames her for her predicament.
When this book is funny, it is very funny. For instance, in considering maybe boyfriend’s offer for her to move in with him, she sees the chaos of his twenty-year-old mechanic’s life, his cars, the accumulation of car parts in the house and considers how "maybe"-ness is the appropriate way to be with him:
“If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.”
There’s a similar (grim) joke she makes that would be familiar to anyone living in a violent area:
“According to the police, of course, our community was a rogue community. It was we who were the enemy, we who were the terrorists, the civilian terrorists, the associates of terrorists or simply individuals suspected of being but not yet discovered to be terrorists. That being the case, and understood by both parties to be the case, the only time you’d call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them, and naturally they would know this and so wouldn’t come.”
On some level the book explores dimensions of what it might mean to be in the “middle” instead of being fully committed to something. “The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be adult.” This book is about divisive politics. And gender politics. And religion. And suppression of sexuality. And also the need to grow up at some point and become aware of things going on in the world. And it doesn't provide easy answers about how to deal with all these concerns.
There are three places in my first two readings of the book where I would have contended with Burns on her choices, the very points of resolution (I won’t name here) with maybe boyfriend, and Milkman, and McSomebody (three key men) where middle sister basically has choices taken away from her by the author. I wished middle sister had to make the choices as part of the process of growing up instead of conveniently having the choices made for her. But I still say it is a great, darkly hilarious book set in a time of violence, a novel for our times. Was there ever a time in which this topic was not of growing up amidst violence was not relevant?
A hopeful change happens in the end as middle sister’s ma, so anxious to marry her off so she can have babies, begins to have a relationship herself with real milkman (who is at one point mistaken for milkman and shot). Middle sister helping ma become a lover is a final and fun and hilarious turn to hope in this sometimes grim book that I look forward to reading again.
Okay, added notes in January 2020, but there's a bit more spoilerish material here, sorry: My third rereading of this book is affected by two things; 1) I began to see the whole book more in terms of the tropes of comedy, where ultimately All's Well That Ends Well. Crazy (that can be seen as funny) things happen in the book, throughout; everyone thinks she is having an affair with milkman, no one believes her, ever, and those three things I talk about above that I thought were conveniently happy things that happen in the end I now think are part of the comedy frame. Since the book has violence in it, because middle sister is being seriously stalked with real implications, I tended to think it was not supposed to be funny, but I think it is being real about the threats of sexual and other forms of violence to her AND being funny, it's that kind of humor; and it ends with love, an hilarious return to love for ma with the help of all her daughters, and love is restored for her with one of the few good guys, third brother-in-law. Bad male behavior is punished, good male behavior is rewarded, as in any good comedy, following Aristotle.
2) the other thing that changed for me in the reading of this book is one reviewer's comment that it makes a difference that middle sister reads all these big nineteenth century novels, because in many ways it feels like one, seeing the large scope of the psycho-sociological landscapes. I saw it this time more and more about what it means to be a teenaged girl (or any girl or woman) living in a patriarchal, male violent, male sexually-threatening society, including this dark comedy frame! One of the great ones, folks.
“’Still,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach nothing,' he said. 'Ach sure,' I said. 'Ach sure what?' he said. 'Ach sure, if that's how you feel.' 'Ach sure, of course that's how I feel.' 'Ach all right then.' 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach,' he said. 'Ach,' I said. 'Ach.'
So that was settled.”
I almost never read Big Prize-winners close to the time of their winning, though I did read George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo in less than a year from its publication date (and loved it) and I did the same with this book, also loving it. This might be the beginning of a trend for me! The book won the 2018 Man Booker prize and it is on the whole exhilarating to read. It's pretty long, 350 pages, but it's worth it; Anna Burns here reads like a refreshingly new voice, in a tone that was initially difficult for me to pick up, until I began listening to the fantastic audiotaped version by Brid Brennan, who is Irish and captures the deadpanned tone running through it. At first it just seemed like a kind of growing-up story with fresh language. Then something like black comedy. So I'll call it tragi-comedy, with real life horror and hilarity, in the guise of a kind of coming-of-age story in first person told by an unnamed 18-year-old woman whom we get to know only as middle sister.
The town would seem to be some northern Ireland town, say Belfast, where Burns grew up, but it is not named, the country is not named, the opposing factions and countries in conflict are never named, and no characters are named. Instead, we meet maybe boyfriend, ma, wee sisters, eldest sister, first brother-in-law, of course Milkman, another guy named real milkman, tablets girl, Somebody McSomebody and throughout we alternately laugh or are terrified, or laugh AS we are being terrified as middle sister tells her story.
Well, certainly this town, and this “hair trigger society,” she describes was inspired by Burns’s Belfast, as she said: “I grew up in a place that was rife with violence, distrust and paranoia, and peopled by individuals trying to navigate and survive in that world as best as they could.”
The novel begins: “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died,” and it is more than 300 pages until we see what this sentence fully means.
The story takes place in the seventies, in the particularly violent time of The Troubles, with car bombs, informants, renouncers, and so on. “It was revenge and counter-revenge,” middle sister writes, “reeling and spinning.” Also a time when working-class people would not acknowledge depression or “the psychological,” as in the severe depression suffered by da. A time when feminism would be seen by the local women as akin to Communism or satanism. As middle sister--who narrates the story from the decades ago she experienced these events--seems to have it, an interest in/obsession with James Bond movies in part informs the macho-psychotic paramilitary impulses with which males engage just as images of move starlets influence the fashion choices of girls and women (with perhaps more damaging effects to the world due to the male obsessions). We never hear in the book of a particular political conversation that drives the violence. It’s all just threats and surveillance and harassing and killing “suspected” people. And the slaughter of cats and dogs, too, beware. There’s a layer here, too, of socio-sexual commentary, as terror/sexual harassment links to politics, informs relationships, especially ones for middle sister involving maybe boyfriend and Milkman and Somebody McSomebody.
So how does middle sister become a person of interest, undergoing surveillance, gossip, threat? She is seen, in public, reading books as she walks! Nineteenth-century books such as Ivanhoe! Do normal people do this?! And in a time of political violence? This is how we—Burns’s readers—come in, because WE would do this, so we begin to care a little about middle-sister, she becomes us to some extent. (Note: I listened to this audiobook while doing a lot of walking! Am I a crazy person, too?!) Middle sister is reserved, a bit of an introvert, she doesn’t want to get involved in politics, it's al insane, she has a first and “maybe” boyfriend she isn’t particularly involved with, she's not understood by her family, she doesn’t have any close friends, and yet when she’s out walking, Milkman stops his van to talk with her and makes it clear that she has now—to him? according to others?—become a person of interest—is it sexual interest? Political interest? Both?
Middle sister is young, might we say on the cusp of adulthood? She doesn't really fully engage with all the madness, doesn't always seem to fully acknowledge the threat Milkman poses for her politically and sexually:
“At eighteen I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment.”
Her mother and the whole neighborhood become aware when Milkman stops to talk periodically with middle sister, and the rumors and gossip that follow lead to strange, absurd conclusions about her. Denial is futile for her; it's clear to them she's just lying in her denials of any relationship. It all gets increasingly hysterical, Monty Python or Kafka level:
“Next came abortions and I had to guess them also, from ‘vermifuge, squaw mint, Satan’s apple, premature expulsion, being failed in the course of coming into being’ with any doubt dispelled by, ‘Well, daughter, you can’t disappoint me anymore than you’ve already disappointed me, so tell me –what did you procure and which of them drab aunts did you procure it of?”
But how does middle sister really respond to the attentions of Milkman?
“I did not like the milkman and had been frightened and confused by his pursuing and attempting an affair with me,” middle sister says. “I would be startled by every encounter, except the last, I was to have with this man.” But no one believes her! Instead, they blame her for luring him away from his poor wife.
Either way, to be “of interest” in a time of violent conflict is dangerous. We know this because people in middle sister’s family have been killed, seen as connecting with the other side, as having the wrong politics. And then middle sister appears to behave in a way that morally calls attention to herself, having a relationship with maybe boyfriend who doesn't live in the district, with whom she "stays over" while not being married, and then she's talking to a married man while walking, and so on.
Middle sister isn’t always sympathetic—Why doesn’t she talk about her real issues with maybe boyfriend? Why does she shut down rather than clearly confront her mother and the neighbor women about Milkman? To her credit, she tries sometimes to defend herself, but she sometimes doesn't yet know what she thinks about things, and sometimes when she talks they just call her a liar, so it takes some time for her to find her way through this morass of gossip and harassment and danger amid her own vulnerable confusion and silence.
"I came to understand how much I'd been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion."
At one point we are relieved as in a bar middle sister tells her former best friend the whole story, but are horrified as we understand this "friend" doesn't believe a word she says, and like the others, blames her for her predicament.
When this book is funny, it is very funny. For instance, in considering maybe boyfriend’s offer for her to move in with him, she sees the chaos of his twenty-year-old mechanic’s life, his cars, the accumulation of car parts in the house and considers how "maybe"-ness is the appropriate way to be with him:
“If we were in a proper relationship and I did live with him and was officially committed to him, first thing I would have to do would be to leave.”
There’s a similar (grim) joke she makes that would be familiar to anyone living in a violent area:
“According to the police, of course, our community was a rogue community. It was we who were the enemy, we who were the terrorists, the civilian terrorists, the associates of terrorists or simply individuals suspected of being but not yet discovered to be terrorists. That being the case, and understood by both parties to be the case, the only time you’d call the police in my area would be if you were going to shoot them, and naturally they would know this and so wouldn’t come.”
On some level the book explores dimensions of what it might mean to be in the “middle” instead of being fully committed to something. “The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be adult.” This book is about divisive politics. And gender politics. And religion. And suppression of sexuality. And also the need to grow up at some point and become aware of things going on in the world. And it doesn't provide easy answers about how to deal with all these concerns.
There are three places in my first two readings of the book where I would have contended with Burns on her choices, the very points of resolution (I won’t name here) with maybe boyfriend, and Milkman, and McSomebody (three key men) where middle sister basically has choices taken away from her by the author. I wished middle sister had to make the choices as part of the process of growing up instead of conveniently having the choices made for her. But I still say it is a great, darkly hilarious book set in a time of violence, a novel for our times. Was there ever a time in which this topic was not of growing up amidst violence was not relevant?
A hopeful change happens in the end as middle sister’s ma, so anxious to marry her off so she can have babies, begins to have a relationship herself with real milkman (who is at one point mistaken for milkman and shot). Middle sister helping ma become a lover is a final and fun and hilarious turn to hope in this sometimes grim book that I look forward to reading again.
Okay, added notes in January 2020, but there's a bit more spoilerish material here, sorry: My third rereading of this book is affected by two things; 1) I began to see the whole book more in terms of the tropes of comedy, where ultimately All's Well That Ends Well. Crazy (that can be seen as funny) things happen in the book, throughout; everyone thinks she is having an affair with milkman, no one believes her, ever, and those three things I talk about above that I thought were conveniently happy things that happen in the end I now think are part of the comedy frame. Since the book has violence in it, because middle sister is being seriously stalked with real implications, I tended to think it was not supposed to be funny, but I think it is being real about the threats of sexual and other forms of violence to her AND being funny, it's that kind of humor; and it ends with love, an hilarious return to love for ma with the help of all her daughters, and love is restored for her with one of the few good guys, third brother-in-law. Bad male behavior is punished, good male behavior is rewarded, as in any good comedy, following Aristotle.
2) the other thing that changed for me in the reading of this book is one reviewer's comment that it makes a difference that middle sister reads all these big nineteenth century novels, because in many ways it feels like one, seeing the large scope of the psycho-sociological landscapes. I saw it this time more and more about what it means to be a teenaged girl (or any girl or woman) living in a patriarchal, male violent, male sexually-threatening society, including this dark comedy frame! One of the great ones, folks.
July 25, 2020
The word that springs to mind upon finishing this book is torturous. There is no doubt that this book joins, if not tops, my list of top ten worst works of literary fiction. To be honest, there is an interesting novel in here somewhere, but the voice, the voice is just completely annoying and overshadows everything else in the book. It’s original. It’s just not original in a good way.
Let’s focus on the good for a moment. The central character, Middle Sister, is narrating the tale. Her character is well developed, and the novel has some astute observations on the dangers of false rumors and innuendo. And about fear. In addition, there are several sections about Middle Sister’s mother, and these are wittily rendered. A LOT happens in this book; characters lie, die, and cry; it should have been so much more interesting than it was. The plotline was completely overshadowed by the repetitious, oddly voiced storytelling.
The problem is that is just feels like one long, tedious story about people you don’t care about. It is very repetitive, and these repetitive sections have some poetic rhythms to them which I would have appreciated had they been in much smaller doses. Much, much smaller. Instead, it took me more than a week to read this relatively short novel, and I was seriously trying. I never DNF, but I came so close. The last 20% was an improvement, but not enough to endure the first 80%. All that being said, watch this one win . . .
UPDATE: And now, this book that I absolutely hated has won the 2018 Man Booker. *gag*
Let’s focus on the good for a moment. The central character, Middle Sister, is narrating the tale. Her character is well developed, and the novel has some astute observations on the dangers of false rumors and innuendo. And about fear. In addition, there are several sections about Middle Sister’s mother, and these are wittily rendered. A LOT happens in this book; characters lie, die, and cry; it should have been so much more interesting than it was. The plotline was completely overshadowed by the repetitious, oddly voiced storytelling.
The problem is that is just feels like one long, tedious story about people you don’t care about. It is very repetitive, and these repetitive sections have some poetic rhythms to them which I would have appreciated had they been in much smaller doses. Much, much smaller. Instead, it took me more than a week to read this relatively short novel, and I was seriously trying. I never DNF, but I came so close. The last 20% was an improvement, but not enough to endure the first 80%. All that being said, watch this one win . . .
UPDATE: And now, this book that I absolutely hated has won the 2018 Man Booker. *gag*
July 4, 2021
Milkman
is one of those books where your feelings about the narrative voice will make or break the reading experience.
Set during the Troubles in Belfast in the 1970s, Milkman references that conflict obliquely, euphemistically, and occasionally directly. The real substance of Milkman however is the psychological effects of living within such conflict – the double-speak, studied nonchalance, vigilance and effort required to stay under the radar enough to get by.
It’s also about the ways in which power structures necessitated by and resulting from the political turmoil can be manipulated and exploited for other, non-political but still nefarious ends. This was fascinating to me as it's not something I've seen written about much: the active participants in the conflict gain status from it, and that can be an end in itself, never mind about ideology.
The sense of time and place are really well done here – there’s a palpable aura of mistrust, suspicion and paranoia pervading every aspect of daily life. I was very drawn to the peripheral female characters (the wee sisters, Ma, the renouncer groupies) but this is a book that almost solely hinges on its (unnamed) protagonist and her singular voice.
It’s an unconventional, digressive, rambling and circuitous narrative voice. I’ve read and enjoyed other books which use a similar style to good effect, but for some reason just couldn’t quite click with it here. A little bit too repetitive maybe? For me it obfuscated rather than elevated the story, and left me disappointed that I could not quite reach the very interesting ideas within.
Set during the Troubles in Belfast in the 1970s, Milkman references that conflict obliquely, euphemistically, and occasionally directly. The real substance of Milkman however is the psychological effects of living within such conflict – the double-speak, studied nonchalance, vigilance and effort required to stay under the radar enough to get by.
It’s also about the ways in which power structures necessitated by and resulting from the political turmoil can be manipulated and exploited for other, non-political but still nefarious ends. This was fascinating to me as it's not something I've seen written about much: the active participants in the conflict gain status from it, and that can be an end in itself, never mind about ideology.
The sense of time and place are really well done here – there’s a palpable aura of mistrust, suspicion and paranoia pervading every aspect of daily life. I was very drawn to the peripheral female characters (the wee sisters, Ma, the renouncer groupies) but this is a book that almost solely hinges on its (unnamed) protagonist and her singular voice.
It’s an unconventional, digressive, rambling and circuitous narrative voice. I’ve read and enjoyed other books which use a similar style to good effect, but for some reason just couldn’t quite click with it here. A little bit too repetitive maybe? For me it obfuscated rather than elevated the story, and left me disappointed that I could not quite reach the very interesting ideas within.
March 31, 2019
A long rambling story told by a teenager stalked by a scary old married guy in an occupied surveillance state. Favorite parts were Mum and maybe-boyfriend's endings.
March 13, 2020
5★
“There was food and drink. The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops’. Placenames. What school you went to. What prayers you said. What hymns you sang. How you pronounced your ‘haitch’ or ‘aitch’. Where you went to work. And of course there were bus-stops. There was the fact that you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn’t want to.”
I remember a saying from my childhood: You can’t win for losing. Or another, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Both of these apply for this eighteen-year-old unnamed girl whose mother has been badgering her to get married since she was sixteen – marry and pop out babies.
Everything is unnamed, but it’s obviously Ireland during The Troubles, when whether she chose a side or not, she was assumed to have one because of her family and kinfolk. What she said or did or to whom she spoke or how she behaved was watched (cameras click in the bushes and from windows) and reported ‘back’ to someone somewhere. An unwary remark or meeting could be noted out of context (the milkman stopped to talk to her), and by the time she got home, ma was waiting, ready to berate her for having an affair with a married man.
She couldn’t win. She does have a secret maybe-boyfriend but won’t let him come to her house because ma will browbeat him into marrying her, which she doesn’t want. What she wants is something that was another popular phrase many years ago, to turn on, tune in, drop out. She hides behind very old books (as do a lot of readers) to the extent that she’s known for always reading-while-walking. Nose in a book. Oblivious.
She is criticised, not for the reason we criticise each other now for looking at our smart phones (danger of walking into pedestrians or traffic), but because she should be watchful.
“On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything – both of rumour and of actuality – didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety or relief and often for some it meant the opposite of power, safety and relief – leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about.”
That is a rather dry paragraph, while the story itself flows freely and doesn’t lend itself to skimming, at least not for me. It’s the kind of writing where I may go back to the beginning of the last break to enjoy how she took me from one thought or place to another.
The humour is black, the situation dire. Families number their losses by how many have been shot and/or killed by someone from ‘across the road’ or the ‘other side’ or by the army from ‘over the water’ or who have died in accidents (bombs that go off at the wrong time) or suicided. Then there’s the drink that so many hide in and depression like her father’s when he was alive.
“She meant depressions, for da had had them: big, massive, scudding, whopping, black-cloud, infectious, crow, raven, jackdaw, coffin-upon-coffin, catacomb-upon-catacomb, skeletons-upon-skulls-upon-bones crawling along the ground to the grave type of depressions.”
People are called and addressed as “first sister”, “first brother-in-law”, and the best are the “wee sisters” whom she is helping to raise. She is middle sister and does not want her eyes opened, she wants to drop out, but then again, she does want to learn, and she’s taking French classes, but she doesn’t want any part of the fighting, burying guns, patching up wounds in back huts, and never trusting anyone but being suspicious of everyone.
“. . . for us, in our community, on ‘our side of the road’, the government here was the enemy, and the police here was the enemy, and the government ‘over there’ was the enemy, and the soldiers from ‘over there’ were the enemy, and the defender-paramilitaries from ‘over the road’ were the enemy and, by extension – thanks to suspicion and history and paranoia – the hospital, the electricity board, the gas board, the water board, the school board, telephone people and anybody wearing a uniform or garments easily to be mistaken for a uniform also were the enemy, and where we were viewed in our turn by our enemies as the enemy – in those dark days, which were the extreme of days, if we hadn’t had the renouncers as our underground buffer between us and this overwhelming and combined enemy, who else, in all the world, would we have had?”
So you can’t win. She can’t win. She does have an epiphany when her French teacher insists on telling their class that the sky ‘out there’ can be any colour, not just the three colours they allow: blue (day), black (night), and white (clouds). She drags them down the corridor to watch a sunset through a big window.
“If what she was saying was true, that the sky – out there – not out there – whatever – could be any colour, that meant anything could be any colour, that anything could be anything, that anything could happen, at any time, in any place, in the whole of the world, and to anybody – probably had too, only we just hadn’t noticed. So no. After generation upon generation, fathers upon forefathers, mothers upon foremothers, centuries and millennia of being one colour officially and three colours unofficially, a colourful sky, just like that, could not be allowed to be.
. . .
Here teacher bade us look at the sky from this brand new perspective, where the sun – enormous and of the most gigantic orange-red colour – in a sky too, with no blue in it – was going down behind buildings in a section of windowpane.
As for this sky, it was now a mix of pink and lemon with a glow of mauve behind it. It had changed colours during our short trip along the corridor and before our eyes was changing colours yet. An emerging gold above the mauve was moving towards a slip of silver, with a different mauve in a corner drifting in from the side. Then there was further pinking. Then more lilac. Then a turquoise that pressed clouds – not white – out of its way.”
And there you pretty much have the cover of this fantastic book, this imaginative look into a young woman’s mind that is frightened of being opened but terrified of being empty.
I loved it and was delighted to see it win the 2018 Booker Prize. There's an interesting review in The Irish Times (before the prize decision) about some of the background.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
“There was food and drink. The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal. There were ‘our shops’ and ‘their shops’. Placenames. What school you went to. What prayers you said. What hymns you sang. How you pronounced your ‘haitch’ or ‘aitch’. Where you went to work. And of course there were bus-stops. There was the fact that you created a political statement everywhere you went, and with everything you did, even if you didn’t want to.”
I remember a saying from my childhood: You can’t win for losing. Or another, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Both of these apply for this eighteen-year-old unnamed girl whose mother has been badgering her to get married since she was sixteen – marry and pop out babies.
Everything is unnamed, but it’s obviously Ireland during The Troubles, when whether she chose a side or not, she was assumed to have one because of her family and kinfolk. What she said or did or to whom she spoke or how she behaved was watched (cameras click in the bushes and from windows) and reported ‘back’ to someone somewhere. An unwary remark or meeting could be noted out of context (the milkman stopped to talk to her), and by the time she got home, ma was waiting, ready to berate her for having an affair with a married man.
She couldn’t win. She does have a secret maybe-boyfriend but won’t let him come to her house because ma will browbeat him into marrying her, which she doesn’t want. What she wants is something that was another popular phrase many years ago, to turn on, tune in, drop out. She hides behind very old books (as do a lot of readers) to the extent that she’s known for always reading-while-walking. Nose in a book. Oblivious.
She is criticised, not for the reason we criticise each other now for looking at our smart phones (danger of walking into pedestrians or traffic), but because she should be watchful.
“On the other hand, being up on, having awareness, clocking everything – both of rumour and of actuality – didn’t prevent things from happening or allow for intervention on, or reversal of things that had already happened. Knowledge didn’t guarantee power, safety or relief and often for some it meant the opposite of power, safety and relief – leaving no outlet for dispersal either, of all the heightened stimuli that had been built by being up on in the first place. Purposely not wanting to know therefore, was exactly what my reading-while-walking was about.”
That is a rather dry paragraph, while the story itself flows freely and doesn’t lend itself to skimming, at least not for me. It’s the kind of writing where I may go back to the beginning of the last break to enjoy how she took me from one thought or place to another.
The humour is black, the situation dire. Families number their losses by how many have been shot and/or killed by someone from ‘across the road’ or the ‘other side’ or by the army from ‘over the water’ or who have died in accidents (bombs that go off at the wrong time) or suicided. Then there’s the drink that so many hide in and depression like her father’s when he was alive.
“She meant depressions, for da had had them: big, massive, scudding, whopping, black-cloud, infectious, crow, raven, jackdaw, coffin-upon-coffin, catacomb-upon-catacomb, skeletons-upon-skulls-upon-bones crawling along the ground to the grave type of depressions.”
People are called and addressed as “first sister”, “first brother-in-law”, and the best are the “wee sisters” whom she is helping to raise. She is middle sister and does not want her eyes opened, she wants to drop out, but then again, she does want to learn, and she’s taking French classes, but she doesn’t want any part of the fighting, burying guns, patching up wounds in back huts, and never trusting anyone but being suspicious of everyone.
“. . . for us, in our community, on ‘our side of the road’, the government here was the enemy, and the police here was the enemy, and the government ‘over there’ was the enemy, and the soldiers from ‘over there’ were the enemy, and the defender-paramilitaries from ‘over the road’ were the enemy and, by extension – thanks to suspicion and history and paranoia – the hospital, the electricity board, the gas board, the water board, the school board, telephone people and anybody wearing a uniform or garments easily to be mistaken for a uniform also were the enemy, and where we were viewed in our turn by our enemies as the enemy – in those dark days, which were the extreme of days, if we hadn’t had the renouncers as our underground buffer between us and this overwhelming and combined enemy, who else, in all the world, would we have had?”
So you can’t win. She can’t win. She does have an epiphany when her French teacher insists on telling their class that the sky ‘out there’ can be any colour, not just the three colours they allow: blue (day), black (night), and white (clouds). She drags them down the corridor to watch a sunset through a big window.
“If what she was saying was true, that the sky – out there – not out there – whatever – could be any colour, that meant anything could be any colour, that anything could be anything, that anything could happen, at any time, in any place, in the whole of the world, and to anybody – probably had too, only we just hadn’t noticed. So no. After generation upon generation, fathers upon forefathers, mothers upon foremothers, centuries and millennia of being one colour officially and three colours unofficially, a colourful sky, just like that, could not be allowed to be.
. . .
Here teacher bade us look at the sky from this brand new perspective, where the sun – enormous and of the most gigantic orange-red colour – in a sky too, with no blue in it – was going down behind buildings in a section of windowpane.
As for this sky, it was now a mix of pink and lemon with a glow of mauve behind it. It had changed colours during our short trip along the corridor and before our eyes was changing colours yet. An emerging gold above the mauve was moving towards a slip of silver, with a different mauve in a corner drifting in from the side. Then there was further pinking. Then more lilac. Then a turquoise that pressed clouds – not white – out of its way.”
And there you pretty much have the cover of this fantastic book, this imaginative look into a young woman’s mind that is frightened of being opened but terrified of being empty.
I loved it and was delighted to see it win the 2018 Booker Prize. There's an interesting review in The Irish Times (before the prize decision) about some of the background.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo...
April 5, 2019
This week I ended up reading Lucia by Alex Pheby while listening to the audiobook of Milkman. It was quite a punch to the literary gut. Both these books accurately and relentlessly (and, somehow, beautifully, which makes them each disturbing on a whole other level) portray how sexual abuse and predation fit so easily into what seems to be normal life on the surface.
The writing style here--an elliptical returning to a very similar sentence, for instance, with a different verb substituted, plus a very repetitive rhythm in sentence structure--seems to reinforce the actual sense of the story, and to reinforce the situation of a much older woman trying to review and understand her memory of being stalked as a child. The style reinforces for me the idea of a woman trying to pin down a very elliptical and emotionally fraught truth about her past.
But there is so much more to this story. It's also a story about way that the violence of "the troubles" has become so frequent that it has become casually accepted, as part of everyday life. People are walking around in fear for their lives, and also in fear one another, and in fear anything or anyone that deviates from absolutely normal, and it's just the way it is. How one young girl navigates her world is something to behold--because most astonishingly of all this is a book of hope. It's a book about joy. It's a book about how love wins in the end, even if the victories are sometimes tragic.
The writing style here--an elliptical returning to a very similar sentence, for instance, with a different verb substituted, plus a very repetitive rhythm in sentence structure--seems to reinforce the actual sense of the story, and to reinforce the situation of a much older woman trying to review and understand her memory of being stalked as a child. The style reinforces for me the idea of a woman trying to pin down a very elliptical and emotionally fraught truth about her past.
But there is so much more to this story. It's also a story about way that the violence of "the troubles" has become so frequent that it has become casually accepted, as part of everyday life. People are walking around in fear for their lives, and also in fear one another, and in fear anything or anyone that deviates from absolutely normal, and it's just the way it is. How one young girl navigates her world is something to behold--because most astonishingly of all this is a book of hope. It's a book about joy. It's a book about how love wins in the end, even if the victories are sometimes tragic.
April 30, 2019
I did not always enjoy my reading (or rather listening) experience. This book combines many things I dislike in fiction: unfairness and characters that drove me up the walls being the most important factors here but also a fairly non-existent plot. But I cannot deny the genius of this book either. Anna Burns has a brilliant way with words and the atmosphere she created here is breathtaking in its claustrophobic intensity.
Told in conversational stream-of-consciousness, the language is the obvious draw here. Anna Burns has crafted sentences so wonderful, I was in awe. Listening to the audiobook worked exceedingly well for me because the conversational and circular narration could shine this way without me skipping whole sentences (as I would surely have done had I read this on paper). Burns works with thoughtful repetition here, making this a stylistically interesting book. Intellectually, I found this stimulating and I absolutely appreciate how she slowly but surely expands on her insular narrative in a way that felt highly rewarding, with themes flowing together and building a cohesive whole.
Ultimately, while I can admire the craft, I really did not enjoy myself. In the middle, I was very close to frustrated tears and wanted to shake the narrator. While I understand what Burns was doing, I would have prefered to follow a different narrator. She really drove me up the walls with her incapability of talking to anybody in any meaningful way. While nobody is ever referred to by their name but rather by descriptors such as “maybe-boyfriend” or “first brother-in-law”, some of these characters became more real than others and the narrator sadly remained a mystery to me until near the end. I might have enjoyed this more otherwise.
So, yes, it’s brilliant, yes, it probably deserves all the accolades it got, but it is very much not the book for me. Writing this review nearly changed my mind, because there really is so much to admire here, but fact is, if I hadn’t read this for the longlist, I would not finished it.
PS: I have changed my rating to four stars because the book has stuck with me and grown on me.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
Told in conversational stream-of-consciousness, the language is the obvious draw here. Anna Burns has crafted sentences so wonderful, I was in awe. Listening to the audiobook worked exceedingly well for me because the conversational and circular narration could shine this way without me skipping whole sentences (as I would surely have done had I read this on paper). Burns works with thoughtful repetition here, making this a stylistically interesting book. Intellectually, I found this stimulating and I absolutely appreciate how she slowly but surely expands on her insular narrative in a way that felt highly rewarding, with themes flowing together and building a cohesive whole.
Ultimately, while I can admire the craft, I really did not enjoy myself. In the middle, I was very close to frustrated tears and wanted to shake the narrator. While I understand what Burns was doing, I would have prefered to follow a different narrator. She really drove me up the walls with her incapability of talking to anybody in any meaningful way. While nobody is ever referred to by their name but rather by descriptors such as “maybe-boyfriend” or “first brother-in-law”, some of these characters became more real than others and the narrator sadly remained a mystery to me until near the end. I might have enjoyed this more otherwise.
So, yes, it’s brilliant, yes, it probably deserves all the accolades it got, but it is very much not the book for me. Writing this review nearly changed my mind, because there really is so much to admire here, but fact is, if I hadn’t read this for the longlist, I would not finished it.
PS: I have changed my rating to four stars because the book has stuck with me and grown on me.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
November 19, 2018
Milkman by Anna Burns is the 2018 Man Booker Prize winner and was just an ok read for me didnt make it on my favourites shelf this year. While I did find it quirky I felt like the book that was trying too hard to be edgy and different and the story and characters got lost along the way.
I am interested in this period of Northern Ireland's history and Anna Burn's approach to this novel is without doubt unique and her sense of 1970 Northern Ireland and the troubles from a woman's point of view is interesting and real. Her characters in this particular story remain nameless and she introductes them throughout the novel referring to them as " First brother in law" and "maybe boyfriend" and "third brother in law" " eldest sister"and Tablet girl and tablet girl's sister (just to give a random example of a few) felt gimmicky and while it was amusing to begin with it, it became repetitive and confusing the deeper into the novel I got. The story is quite dark and yet funny in places and I did like this element to the book.
However my interest waned the further along the book I read as it became a bit of a ramble and didn't hold my attention and I found myself zoning out with the long and tedious sentences.
I think its one of those books that if I was asked in a years time " oh! did you read MILKMAN I would definitely remember the book for it's quirkiness but not for it's story or characters. An ok read for me but certainly not one for my favourites shelf.
I listened to this one on audible and the narrator and pace was very good.
I am interested in this period of Northern Ireland's history and Anna Burn's approach to this novel is without doubt unique and her sense of 1970 Northern Ireland and the troubles from a woman's point of view is interesting and real. Her characters in this particular story remain nameless and she introductes them throughout the novel referring to them as " First brother in law" and "maybe boyfriend" and "third brother in law" " eldest sister"and Tablet girl and tablet girl's sister (just to give a random example of a few) felt gimmicky and while it was amusing to begin with it, it became repetitive and confusing the deeper into the novel I got. The story is quite dark and yet funny in places and I did like this element to the book.
However my interest waned the further along the book I read as it became a bit of a ramble and didn't hold my attention and I found myself zoning out with the long and tedious sentences.
I think its one of those books that if I was asked in a years time " oh! did you read MILKMAN I would definitely remember the book for it's quirkiness but not for it's story or characters. An ok read for me but certainly not one for my favourites shelf.
I listened to this one on audible and the narrator and pace was very good.
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