Milkman: A Novel

A masterpiece of writing.

“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 trouble 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 …”This synopsis, combined with the intriguing opening sentence "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." were clues which gave me some indication that this would not be a run of the mill story. However, even those clues could not fully prepare me for the remarkable literary journey I was about to embark on! This novel is set in an unnamed city during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland; the exact date is not mentioned but clues point to the 1990s, when the modern-day conflict was decades old and patterns of behaviour were well-established. It is narrated by an unnamed 18-year-old girl who is trying to keep a low profile in a community which is divided by religious and tribal strife. One of the most striking things about this story is that, with one exception about three-quarters of the way through it, no proper names are used. The protagonist is “middle sister”, she lives at home with her ma (her da is dead), she goes jogging with “third brother-in-law”, is in love with her “nearly-boyfriend”, her other sisters are referred to by their position in the family, with the three youngest, still living at home, being a collective “wee sisters”. There is “Milkman”, her stalker; the “real milkman”, who is indifferent to what anyone says about him; characters who are “beyond the pale”, such as “tablets girl” and a group of feminists who are known as the “issue women”, who are way, way beyond the pale. The UK is referred to as “over-the-water” and, in this Catholic community, anything which hints of any connection with “over-the-water”, such as having the “wrong” name, will get boys “bashed”, whilst girls with the “wrong” name will “just get dirty looks”. The fact that middle sister walks along reading a nineteenth century novel (she doesn’t like twentieth century ones!) is not only a striking metaphor for “keeping your head down”, it also captures this young woman’s attempts to navigate her journey towards adulthood her own way. However, it is also behaviour which is bound to mark her out as different and being “different” in a community which sees homogeneity as key to survival, is sure to attract criticism and suspicion, as well as unwanted attention. For our protagonist the most threatening attention comes in the form of the creepy, menacing Milkman, a 41-year-old married man, a senior figure in the paramilitary who has a reputation for grooming young women. When he starts to accompany her when she is running on her own, his stream of sexual innuendo making it clear that he is “interested” in her, the gossip starts, with the community coming to believe they are having an affair. Suddenly she is “interesting”, something no one aspires to because of the danger it represents. The fact that the characters are not given names evocatively captures the oppressive nature of any totalitarian community or state: people are dehumanised if they aren’t given names. As I was reading I felt more and more drawn into a world which was full of tension, claustrophobia, menace, paranoia and violence, one which felt threatening and restricting and where a concept of personal identity all too often had its roots in tribalism. In any community where dysfunctional attitudes and behaviour have become entrenched over decades, there is an apparently easy acceptance of what should be totally unacceptable, and this allows anomie to become the norm. As the story progressed I felt totally engaged with middle sister as she tried to find ways of being herself whilst, at the same time, not being rejected by those around her. I felt enveloped by her pain and confusion, particularly when her elder siblings and her mother seemed to be her worst critics rather than people she could trust to support her. The narrative captures something of what it must feel like to have to live surrounded by violence, living a life which “simply has to be lived and died in extremes”. How feeling constantly fearful and uncertain is a state of mind which is inculcated from early childhood, eroding self-belief. It is one which creates an atmosphere of suspicion which is so toxic that you don’t even dare to trust those who are probably trustworthy, who could offer support, thus leaving you feeling isolated and vulnerable. The insistent nature of the narrative evokes the horror of having to live under constant surveillance and of feeling powerless in the face of such scrutiny. In such a situation is acknowledging your very powerlessness, and then finding ways to develop a sense of acceptance and detachment, the only way to wrest back some feeling of personal power? A central theme in this story reflects the way in which women are often treated in an overtly patriarchal society, where casual objectification of them so easily leads to the tolerance of physical and sexual abuse. However, such disempowerment is often a defensive reaction to feeling threatened and I really enjoyed the fact that the author explored how, even in a society where men appear to be in charge, when women act cooperatively and determinedly they can enforce change. Middle sister’s narrative voice takes the form of a stream of consciousness, which is as relentless as it is compelling, and it was this which inexorably drew me into her world and her daily struggles to negotiate that world. She is a bright, thoughtful, caring character whose way of escaping some of the horrors which surround her is to immerse herself, through reading novels from a different century, in a gentler, more benign world – I think most readers will recognise this as one of the joyful benefits of reading! However, this story is anything but gentle and the relentless reflections and anxieties of the main character lead to paragraphs which are frequently several pages long. This, combined with the fact that there are only seven chapters, means that there are few natural breaks for the reader to find an escape from this relentlessness and initially I found this rather difficult. However, once I was able to “hear” her voice I found it hard to put the book down and, several days after finishing it, especially as I write this review, that voice remains with me. This is a story which requires time and concentration, but that commitment will reward you with an unforgettable character and a thought-provoking story. It is a story which is frequently dark and disturbing, but it is one which has moments of deliciously dark humour – as well as some delightful lightness provided by the “wee sisters”! The fact that the author’s use of language is so powerfully evocative and, at times, poetic, makes this a book which I know will remain in my memory for a long time. I think it is a masterpiece, fully deserving of its place on the Man Booker longlist – and I very much hope it makes the shortlist! Although the background landscape to “Milkman” is Northern Ireland, this is a story which could just as easily be set in any community facing an oppressive regime, be that political, social or religious or, on a more intimate level, in any tight-knit community. I think that this lends it a universal authenticity which, along with the wide-ranging themes explored in the story, would make it a wonderful choice for reading groups.

I picked this up somewhat warily after it won the Man Booker because I had understood it wasn’t an easy read. It’s true that it has fewer paragraph and chapter breaks than I generally prefer, but it’s such a strong read that it’s hard to complain. It’s a historical novel that is urgent and contemporary. It is a story about the Troubles that is both disturbing and properly funny. Funnier than The Sellout or any other novel I can think of recently that was marketed as a hilarious satire. It may be the confirmation bias talking, but this was a fine and worthy book.

Although I've started a couple of other books since I finished "Milkman", as I lay in bed, insomniac, it drifted up to the surface of my mind as something sad that I couldn't release. I can't imagine a book that so distinctly illustrates how war moulds and damages people, even the physical environment. A lot of that is in the covert nature of so much of the "Troubles" and its consequences for relationships, some of that is from the author's deep understanding of personality trying to burrow out security, where no heroism remains, even among people on the same side. Beautifully, poetically written in a naive voice, only a writer of this quality could possibly tarry so long over a build up of action and plot development. The downfall is that it is a very long, flat landscape of 'no glory', where the crucial love relationship resolves in one case in disappointment, in the other case in a kind of role-reversal dismissal through tragic end. Personally, I would have liked the main character to find out a bit more about 'Milkman', testing the limits of the powder-room training she had received. His shadow, the other milkman from beyond the Pale who just couldn't love anybody, simply hadn't ever learned to hate anybody. I think he lived.

Middle Sister is the heart of this nightmarish book. Middle Sister likes to read while walking, but only books from other centuries, which others find odd. One day while walking she runs into the sinister Milkman in his van, a paramilitary in what seems to be Ireland during the 1970s. Middle Sister becomes the focus of gossip which gets out of control. I guess Middle Sister was really paranoid about that milkman after a while. But Middle Sister and all those around her are in constant fear, unable to even go into the hospital, instead keeping shed pharmacies. The book is written in an odd style - all over the place. I feel like the writing is very repetitive, sometimes giving three examples of the same idea, not trusting the reader to understand. It's a fine book if you're looking a thesaurus (in threes). But also, the general plot details seem to keep circling back on themselves. The only thing I can think of, is that this would be Middle Sister's unfiltered voice in a time of chaos and anxiety for her. I'm not really sure why this book is written the way it is, if it is from Middle Sister's perspective. At the very least, she only reads older books, as she hates the century she is living in, so shouldn't the book be written in an older style? If anything, if done right, that would make the writing more interesting. I liked Middle Sister, but if the reasoning for the writing style made more sense to me, I would have liked the book better. The Wee Sisters were fun. The glimpse into Tablets Girl made me wish she had a book for herself. The book is very dark, yet also maintains some humor on almost every page. The general plot seems very Kafkaesque while also being very much of the time of Ireland in the 1970s. It seems every novel IS Kafkaesque now, as LIFE is Kafkaesque now. Poor Kafka, you knew all along.

Extraordinary.This is wildly inventive fiction that's not quite like anything I've ever read before. And how often can you say that as a reader? MILKMAN is an absolute masterclass from Anna Burns in how -- word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page -- to build an ever-deepening mood of paranoia, suspicion, and dread. By the end of the novel, we almost feel trapped ourselves in the chilling and claustrophobic web she's spun. It's a repressive world of informers, prying neighbors, soldiers and paramilitaries, kangaroo courts, bombings, killings and torture, corruption, stalkers, rumors and innuendo, secrets and lies. There's "our side of the road" and "their side of the road"; "us" and "them." Everyone knows everyone's business, and there's no place to hide. One wrong word or thoughtless gesture can spell disaster. Perception is everything, and conformity is ruthlessly enforced."The whole community's a suspect community. Everybody has a file on them. Everybody's house, everybody's movements, everybody's connections constantly are checked and kept an eye on. . . . With all their monitoring, their infiltrating, their intercepting, listening at posts, drawing-up of room layouts, of position of furniture, of ornament placement, of wallpaper, of watch lists and geo-profiling, cutting feeds and feeding feeds, and 'mother goose' and divination by tea-leaves and not least, with their helicopters flying over an alienated, cynical, existentially bitter landscape, it's no wonder everyone has files on them. . . . They even photograph shadows."Violence is ever-present in MILKMAN. The overt violence of this world speaks for itself, but what Burns gets just right is the *threat* of violence that always lurks just off stage. There's a constant sense of menace and dread. Everyone is uneasy all the time, and Burns keep the tension ratcheted up. It's an edgy world these characters live in, and it's an edgy reading experience. No one is safe -- not even the cats and dogs. Although Burns has set her novel in a very real and specific place in the past (Northern Ireland during the Troubles), the effect of her language and the sort of hell she's created give the story an almost dystopian, totalitarian feel. It brought Margaret Atwood to mind for me. Or George Orwell. Or Julian Barnes in THE NOISE OF TIME. Somehow she's created an atmosphere that's both surreal and all too real. And yet, for all that, MILKMAN is very, very funny. It may be a grim tale, but it's told in a voice that's full of dry wit and irony. You can't help laughing, even if you're wincing at the same time. Dark humor indeed.I haven't been as entranced by the pure power of a novel's language since Jon McGregor's RESERVOIR 13. Burns's prose is the dominant presence in the book. It's almost like a character itself, driving the story forward. The narration is a relentless stream that steadily builds in power. Her rhythm and cadence are remarkable, and the overall effect is mesmerizing. As you may already know, places, groups, and characters deliberately don't have names: we meet "middle sister" (our narrator), "maybe-boyfriend, "longest friend," "teacher," "Somebody McSomebody," "third brother-in-law," and of course "Milkman" (definitely not to be confused with "real milkman"). My initial reaction was that this felt like a gimmick, but I quickly came to love it. In the end, I found the intentional imprecision and misdirection of her language to be genius. It's deliberately unsettling, and it adds to the creepy sense of dislocation that makes the book so effective. MILKMAN isn't perfect. It's a big, dense book. The language and the stream-of-consciousness style of narration do take some getting used to. The sentences and paragraphs are long and there are few chapters or other logical breaks. There are digressions in middle sister's narration that can be distracting. It's obviously not everyone's cup of tea, and I get that. I can't help feeling myself that it could have been a leaner and tighter book, and maybe that it could have more effective as a result. But this is the book Anna Burns gave us, and I'll gladly take it as it is. It's an incredibly powerful statement about violence and repression against women, and it's incredibly powerful period. It was a mind-blowing and richly rewarding reading experience. I both read and listened to the book, and it was brilliant both ways. That said, I'll put in a special plug for the audio-book narration of Brid Brennan, with her Ulster accent. She's pitch-perfect, and she gets the sardonic humor in middle sister's voice just right. For a book in which language is so important, especially in its specific setting, I enjoyed actually *hearing* the language. And I think that helped me approach the prose when I would go back to reading in print form. As I went back and forth, each method of reading reinforced the other, in the most marvelous way.I was truly delighted when MILKMAN won the Man Booker Prize. I'm sometimes disappointed with the big book prizes (aren't we all?). But a result like this restores my faith in the role prizes can play in literature. It's a meaningful success, and I'm very pleased for Anna Burns. MILKMAN is a unique and special book. And I won't forget it anytime soon.

As a native of Northern Ireland and indeed spending a greater part of my teens in battle ridden Belfast I am well versed with the people and the country to appreciate or not Milkman by Anna Burns. I have to admit at first blush indeed for the first few chapters I was intrigued by her intensive and somewhat claustrophobic style. Here was a society built on gossip, a suspicious people hardened by a bitter indoctrination an unnerving belief in the supremacy of the catholic church or the teachings of such inflammatory demagogues as the most Reverent Ian Paisley, Jerry Adams or indeed intimation by the various sectarian groups UDA, IRA who viewed Belfast as their very own battle ground. The best way to describe her style of writing is to think of a book and all the words that make up a story....take those words throw them high into the air and upon retrieval start reading....The experience is not quite right it's a jumbled and confusing picture that is painted which quite neatly sums up Milkman. This is a story where no one has a name and is narrated by middle sister who attempts to keep her mother and family ignorant of her maybe boyfriend and her rumoured affair with the Milkman. It is a story and language that tries to copy and show the small minded approach of a hypocritical populace where to be the wrong religion was a sentence of death, and where a strong opinion would leave you open to persecution by the shadowy renouncers. It didn't work for me with few chapters a total lack and use of paragraphs the whole experience was muddled and confused. If the intent of the author was to get inside the mindset of the politically deranged "Ulsterman" it failed miserably and was a great disappointment to me personally.

I've given up!I should know by now that a book that wins the Man Booker prize is going to do nothing for me. With the exception of White Tiger, I have never enjoyed a Man Booker prize winner and Milkman was no exception. I was listening to an excellent reading by Bríd Brennan, complete with genuine Irish accent, but even this could not make up for the unnecessary verbosity of this book. Huge credit to the narrator for making it to the end, I abandoned ship at 23%.Just as an example, here is a typical paragraph:"Considering alone his avowals of devotion towards women, his mission of idolatry, his supreme glorification and deification and view that on earth in women was the life of things, the breadth of things, the cyclicality, essential nature, higher aspect, the best, most archetypal and utmost mystery of everything." And this was then followed by an endless discourse about whether or not the sky was actually blue?There was much scope to provide an understanding of life as a young girl during the time of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland. The way women were treated, the boys' names that were or weren't acceptable, who was 'in' and who was 'beyond the pail', This book kind of suffuses this into the reader by osmosis, but by the same token, it was becoming more and more irritating and I do my reading for enjoyment; I was not enjoying the style of this book at all.My first abandoned book this year :(

Milkman, is not an easy read, and it’s writing is at times hard to follow it does have its moments with the sarcasm and black humour, typical of the Irish. (I can say that as I have family in Belfast and I visited the city myself as a child in the late 60’s, yes I’m getting on a bit). I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it though, but I’m glad I’ve read it for the insights to a difficult time.

Dark, but very funny (for the right sort of reader). There are so many brilliantly weird characters that the narrator herself ends up seeming rather dull by comparison, and the constant refrain of how every subject has an us-and-them dimension was a bit wearying. That being said, if it annoyed me imagine what it was like to actually live through it!

A sly, sad, funny, predictable, unpredictable, tale about middle sister’s predicament of being a beautiful and bookish 18 year old entrapped in a city drained of joy and hope by militia, rebels and homegrown self-imposed conformity.

In my opinion , this book had a lot of drawn out descriptions and a lot of thought analysis for any one small topic. The plot move very slow in comparison to all the explaining. I wished more the plot would move faster to keep me more interested.

an acquired taste but well worth the investment in time!

Reason Read: Northern Irish Author, BookBingo, Booker Prize This book is set in the time of The Troubles in Northern Ireland and is the story of an 18 y/o girl who is being harassed by a man called the 'milkman'. The novel addresses issues of feminism and life during The Troubles (1970s). The book never gives anyone a name and the town is not named. It probably is Belfast. This was the winner of the 2018 Booker. Anna Burns was the first Northern Irish writer to receive the award. Burns grew up in Northern Ireland in the 70s. The troubles was a political, ethnic, and religious conflict between nationalists (Catholic and Irish) and loyalist (Protestant descendants of British settlers). This book was published by Greywolf publishing (a Minnesota publishing company). Liked: I enjoyed this coming of age story set in a time of fearDisliked: sometimes details seemed too vague

Although names are not given to places or protagonists, Milkman is understandable as a novel set in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles'. The style is dense and requires concentration - not a relaxing read. The narrator struggles to find ways of coping with what to an observer seems a mad world where it is less troubling to the population at large to carry Semtex around than to be seen reading a book while walking along. Rumour becomes more powerful than fact and the main character struggles to avoid becoming the victim of a predatory older man, to the extent that it seems to be affecting her mental health. Although the idea of living in such an environment is both depressing and horrifying, there is much humour in the novel, and while reading it you veer between being appalled by the situation and amused and impressed by the ways in which people contrive to live positively in such a society.

If Derry Girls was a stream-of-consciousness novel it might be Milkman.Frightening, funny and so close to those Troubled times, this is a novel of female experience and of ways to cope in the face of a culture and society oppressed by its history and the status quo.

I don't know what to say. A very interesting story and interesting albeit wordy narration, but at the same time heavy and complicated. Bizarre chracters and milieu. Definitely something i did not expect. That's all I can say for now.

At first, I thought that this was a dystopian novel, but no. Set in Ulster during the troubles from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl. I can't say I enjoyed it but it did paint a compelling portrait of a city district under paramilitary control and the lives of all within.
The lack of real names is a bit jarring at first, but after a while, it seemed normal. The long paragraphs and other less conventional writing styles also create a sense of discomfort in the reader too.

Stunning. I could not put it down. This stream of consciousness, single point of view of an 18 year old woman growing up in the Catholic section of Belfast surprises me by its lilting accessibility, its commentary on the social construct under pressure of lies, violence, gossip and tribalism. Profound in many ways.

This book is not for everybody, but it was definitely for me. It's an unflinching and frank examination of stalking and harassing women and their effects, coupled with deep political unrest. It's darkly funny and bold, and I am going to be thinking about this book for a very long time. This might be the best Booker winner I've read in several years.

HOW DID THIS BOOK WIN AN AWARD? I wanted to like this book. I hate it when I can’t find any redeeming factor in a novel. Like many before me I just can’t understand how this won awards. The flow of the story was repetitive, and switched from past to future to present with clumsy transitions. The plot or theme of the book being about gossip and the damage it can cause would have been better served with a more organized flow. It very much seemed that Anna Burns just wrote every thought that entered her head as she thought it. Perhaps that is the appeal for many, but the lack of names and only descriptors to describe any given character made this a bear to try to follow. I found myself dozing off only to come back 10-15 minutes later to the same conversation still being had. Consider yourself warned. Book Prompt: A book by a woman and/or AOC (author of color) that won a literary award in 2018

Everything, the story, the language, the insight into human charcater, as well as tge fascinating historical context!

Brilliant! Love the dark humour.

horrible. I couldn't finish the book and read only sixty pages before i gave up,this s too bad, because this is supposedly a mystery and i truly loveem, and second, my mother is from Ireland and she talked like the heroine..

I was very glad to see this book end.It's dense, first-person, and rather stream-of-consciousness. One paragraph will frequently span a page. And the subject matter is tough - life in a Northern Ireland city under the IRA, or "renouncers" as they are strictly called here. As tough as the renouncers themselves are, the entire community serves as a kind of character itself, enforcing rules and behaviors on what seems every aspect of people's existence. It was absolutely vicariously stultifying to read. While nobody is allowed to give their baby the wrong name, or be seen with the wrong person or live in the wrong district, the town seems perfectly willing to tolerate lunatics and murderers in their midst - not only the renouncers, but garden-variety nutjobs, too. An extremely obtrusive gimmick of the story is that absolutely nobody is named by name. Everyone is referred to by shorthand nicknames, relationships, and birth order. This intensifies the feeling of the unimportance of the individual in the midst of a community where conformity is all-consuming.There is plot, and there is character, so as a novel it was not as much of a slog as some modernist tomes. And there is catharsis - but what was perhaps most annoying, towards the end as the plot is winding down, you finally want to start breathing freely like the narrator; and suddenly, we zip back in time a couple of weeks with a pretty silly subplot. That just put me over the edge of dislike; I haven't been so happy to finally reach the end of a book in some time.And silly subplots there are, but it was usually hard to laugh at the humor, couched as it was in the middle of difficult subject matter, and a narrator having a nervous breakdown most of the time.

Remarkable work, read in an equally stunning voice. Both author and narrator from Belfast, where the setting takes place, at time of the Troubles

One of the best books I have read in the last 5 years. Truly marvelous!

Read the NYT reviews before you read this. I do NOT recommend this. Read Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing. Such a better read!!!!!

I genuinely have no idea what the Booker prize judges look for in a novel. If this is anything to go by, it’s a haphazard hotchpotch that can never quite decide what it wants to be.

Clever initially in its idea, the book starts as an almost dystopian future, though we are actually looking to the past. But does it want to be dystopian, or does it want to be a commentary on living in 1970s Belfast? Or is it a commentary on the effect of stalking - a book for the #MeToo generation. It really can’t decide, and because of this, it disintegrates into a overly long, dull read.

Added to this I’d the most annoying narrator I have come across in a long while. We are introduced to one set of people or a situation -eating third brother-in-law for a run, for example, and then suddenly thrown into another situation without warning, to return numerous pages later to the original situation, by which time we’d forgotten about it. Not to mention the long stretches of irrelevant commentary - wrong spouses, tablets girls’s sister - I came close several times to abandoning this book out of sheer boredom.

This book was badly in need of a good editor.

Walking while reading a girl, Middle sister, is pursued by the Milkman. This original sometimes mesmerizing narrative made be successively fascinated and bored with the dizzying rapidity of thoughts that connected - somehow, sometimes.