Milkman

Man Booker Prize-winning novel 

Man Booker Prize winners always seem to be a bit of a mixed bag for me. Some I love, some not so much. I’ve read quite a few of them, and even tried to join in on the Man Booker 50 Challenge last year (with poor success). Of course, since last year, the prize is now known as the Booker Prize after a bit of a funding reshuffle. Anyway, this book won the 2018 Man Booker Prize and apart from being the first author from Northern Ireland to win the prestigious award, she has also been very frank about her financial situation following finishing her novel. It has a striking cover and after picking up a copy a while back from the National Library of Australia’s bookshop, I finally got around to reading it.

“Milkman” by Anna Burns is a novel told by an unnamed narrator, in an unnamed town, in an unnamed country. The narrator, referred to variously as middle sister, daughter, sister-in-law and maybe-girlfriend, lives in a town with what is described as “political problems”. Rife with gossip, the people in the town are constantly examining each other for signs of who is a renouncer and who is an informer. The narrator tries to keep her head down, looking after her wee sisters, reading books, jogging through the park, meeting up with her maybe-boyfriend. However, when she is the one people are gossiping about and she starts to attract the attention of a man known only as Milkman, the narrator finds keeping her head down is not as easy as she thought.

This is a complex, intricate novel inspired by The Troubles in Northern Ireland, but universal to any political conflict. The book has a thoughtful, idiosyncratic style with the narrator carefully using pseudonyms and scrupulously describing concepts and events in abstract and often over-complicated ways. Burns is an intelligent writer who, through her unique storytelling, unpacks the tension of living through political instability as well issues specific to being a young woman. Although to the reader, the narrator doesn’t seem so unusual, her hobbies and behaviour are subject to intense scrutiny by her mother, her family and her community. Her seemingly innocuous hobbies of book-reading and jogging are judged by those around her, not so much because they themselves care, but because they are worried what everyone else will think. However, at the heart of the story is the way the narrator is followed by Milkman and his associates, and the way that everyone in the community assumes that it is her fault.

However, this is not an easy book to read. It took me a really long time to get through this book and the writing style, as unique as it is, it is at times very difficult to immerse yourself in. I think there was a point, maybe three quarters of the way through, where I finally clicked with the book. However, that is a long slog for a reader. As insightful and intelligent as this book is, you have to work really hard to get to the end of it, and I think that this would affect the accessibility of this book to a lot of people. 

A perceptive, original and highly intellectual book, that I think a lot of people might find a bit hard to get into.