Title: Milkman by Anna Burns
Read as: eBook
Details: 352 pages, Faber & Faber
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.
My No Spoilers Review
I remember when I first saw the cover of Milkman. It was last Summer, soon after I started working in libraries. The cover is absolutely gorgeous and stood out to me instantly. What a beautiful book. Flipping it over I skimmed the blurb. It sounded interesting, although the plot seemed vague. I remember thinking I’d like to read it. But I didn’t think about it again until the day the Man Booker Prize was announced. It then became a must-read, but unfortunately, everyone-and-their-dog thought that too. I added myself to the library reservation list. Number 364. Ouch. This may take some time!
It wasn’t until March that I finally got my hands on it. I was still on the waiting list, (I’d got down to the 100s!) but saw it had been added to the Cloud Library. The Cloud Library is the eBook library service for Libraries West* and often has new releases on there. Luckily, as it’s still quite a new service, not many people know about it yet. I added myself to the waiting list, and lo and behold, just a few weeks later I could finally get reading! It’s been a process getting here, but some books are worth the wait.
You might be wondering why I didn’t just buy it, and to that, I say I earn very little money so can’t afford new books. I also work for the library, so I am naturally a keen advocate for using it! They have all the books for free! And usually, there isn’t so much of a wait. Especially if you’re proactive. And have access to the library database system lol.
Anyway, back to Milkman.
I was hoping it would live up to the hype. I dislike books with so much hype, but for some reason, Milkman still appealed to me after all this time. Despite liking literary fiction but don’t read it as much as I’d like. Usually, because I get distracted by the latest bookstagram trend. But also, because they can be quite intimidating. Milkman is definitely intimidating, and I can see why many have been put off it. If you’re not used to the style of writing it can be a slog, to begin with.
You have no certainty regarding place or time. No location or time period is given, although there are hints sprinkled throughout. For me, I imagined it set in 1970s sort of time, in Ireland. This was because there were frequent mentions of ‘the troubles’ and ‘over the water’, ‘over the road’, ‘over the border’, etc. It had a sort of dystopian, apocalyptic feel to it as if it takes place outside of space and time. The young female protagonist is writing about this time looking back as if from a different future, hinting at changes since the story told.
She clings on to classic literature to get her through her days, a thread that runs throughout the book. She becomes known as the girl who walks and reads. It is seen as odd, not right. Anything out of the ordinary is questioned.
“Every weekday, rain or shine, gunplay or bombs, stand-off or riots, I preferred to walk home reading my latest book. This would be a nineteenth-century book because I did not like twentieth-century books because I did not like the twentieth century.”
There are also no names in Milkman.
It’s ‘maybe-boyfriend’ and ‘McSomebody’ and, of course, the titular ‘milkman’. There is a strong sense of her vulnerability as a young woman, and it’s this that the milkman preys on.
“Six years on, as he tried to work is way through me and my remaining elder sisters, with the three of us – directly, indirectly, politely, fuck-off-ly – rejecting him, the milkman, also uninvited but much more frightening, much more dangerous, stepped from out of nowhere onto the scene.”
The position of women in society is clear throughout. She feels at a disadvantage. The tension is stifling, pouring off the page.
“I didn’t have those other thoughts until later, and I don’t mean an hour later. I mean twenty years later. 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?”
In terms of plot, it is mainly character driven.
It feels slow for the first half, and small moments are given meaning gradually. This allows for such a strong sense of atmosphere I felt as if I had a dark cloud above my head for days. It’s an unusual read, with little oddities – such as cat heads and poison – thrown in, but it is mainly the atmosphere that stays with you. The Man Booker Prize was well deserved. Burns’ writing is well crafted, almost lyrical in its beauty. I see it as a future modern classic. The kind that is studied in schools, as it is such elegant literature.
It’s not for everybody. Like with most books I think, give it 100 pages and see how you feel. Life is too short, and the To-Be-Read list too long, to find reading boring after all. For me, I liked it. And that means a solid three stars. Not amazing, but still a good read.
Have you read Milkman? What did you think?
“‘It’s not about being happy,’ he said, which was, and still is, the saddest remark I’ve ever heard.”
Similar to: Normal People, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Fish Tank, Circe
[I will only list books/media here that I have myself read/seen, so please do add your own recommendations in the comments]
*Libraries West includes the following local library services: Bristol, Bath & NE Somerset, North Somerset, Somerset, Poole, Dorset and South Gloucestershire.
