Paperback
348 pages

Synopsis:

It took a wee while getting used to the style of Anna Burns's Man Booker Prize 2018-winning novel, Milkman. One doesn't often read books with long paragraphs (at times running into five pages) and no names (not of people not of places), and lots of repetition of words and phrases (certainly no Hemingway this). Particularly no names. The 18-year-old narrator is 'middle sister' (she has six sisters and four brothers) and is given to reading while walking, a trait that puts her well on the path of becoming one of the 'beyond the pales'. This is reinforced by her carrying a dead cat's head in a handkerchief just to give it a proper burial. She has a maybe-boyfriend, she has Milkman (with a capital letter) and a real milkman, wee sisters (three of them, all below 10 and all precocious), a mother, a stalker named Somebody McSomebody, Tablets girl who goes about poisoning people, and the 'issue women'. And where is all this? No names, but still one understands where, with a 'country over the sea' and a country 'on the other side of the road' and two embattled religions. The author is, incidentally, from Belfast, Northern Ireland.

One is soon drawn into the narrative, based in the 1970s, laced with gossip, rumours, misunderstandings, renouncer attacks and state counter attacks (or vice versa), arms caches being found and scattered, a big issue being made over a Roller Bentley supercharger because of the flag on it. Dead-pan humour at times lightens the tale, which soon becomes highly engrossing until you finally realise, regretfully, that it is over. I've not read the other Man Booker Prize 2018-nominated books, but I can see why Milkman is a worthy winner.