Review: Milkman

Anna Burns, Milkman (Faber & Faber 2018)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36047860-milkman?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=8oLTfyWK3C&rank=1

The dark, floaty, but witty tale of an unwelcome wooing in the dangerous world of the Northern Ireland Troubles
This novel has a fantastic first line: ‘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.’ We enter a world (Northern Ireland during the Troubles) where everything, from what you name your child—if it’s Nigel or Troy, expect beats—to what you cook—it had better not be petit fours or amuse bouches—even to what car parts you dirty your living room carpet with, is divided between ‘their side of the street’ and ‘our side of the street’.
Trying not to draw attention to herself in a dangerous environment, ‘middle-sister’ has the habit of ‘walking-while-reading’. This, however, is criticised by the gossips, especially when she becomes the unwelcome target of the amorous attentions of a ‘major paramilitary player’.
Burns has a completely unique stream of consciousness writing style, with page after page of endless tangents, which, especially toward the end, become very witty, amidst all the murders.
One technique is saying things three times in three different ways. For example: ‘being up on, having awareness, clocking everything… didn’t prevent things from happening’. She doesn’t say what ‘things’ she’s referring to, yet by that description, we learn something, get a sense of, absorb information on the feelings revolving around those ‘things’.
People and places are not named, rather being referred to as ‘maybe-boyfriend’ or ‘third brother-in-law’, ‘the ten-minute-place’ or ‘over the water’. This glides you into a sort of fantasy world, creating an ‘uncomfortable floatiness’, a sense of unease, a feeling of foreboding and threat, in the midst of which one is nevertheless chuckling.