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Book Reviewed by:
Michael Kaler
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Winner of the 2018 Man Booker Prize, Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.
In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes "interesting," the last thing she ever wanted to be.
Despite middle sister's attempts to avoid him - and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend - rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor,
Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.
Excerpt
Milkman
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. He had been shot by one of the state hit squads and I did not care about the shooting of this man. Others did care though, and some were those who, in the parlance, 'knew me to see but not to speak to' and I was being talked about because there was a rumour started by them, or more likely by first brother-in- law, that I had been having an affair with this milkman and that I was eighteen and he was forty-one. I knew his age, not because he got shot and it was given by the media, but because there had been talk before this, for months before the shooting, by these people of the rumour, that forty-one and eighteen was disgusting, that twenty-three years' difference was disgusting, that he was married and not to be fooled by me for there were plenty of quiet, unnoticeable people who took a bit of watching. It had been my fault too, it seemed,...
Booker Prize
2018
National Book Critics Circle Award
2018
Thoughtful and deliberate, Milkman offers incisive commentary on gender socialization and the pressure to conform during an era of political instability. While the novel's experimental form and excessive introspection won't appeal to everyone, Burns has crafted an unforgettable tale about what it means to fall below "the benchmark of social regularity" at a time when difference is demonized...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Michael Kaler).
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Chairman of the judges for the Man Booker Prize
None of us has ever read anything like this before. Anna Burns' utterly distinctive voice challenges conventional thinking and form in surprising and immersive prose. It is a story of brutality, sexual encroachment and resistance threaded with mordant humor. Set in a society divided against itself, Milkman explores the insidious forms oppression can take in everyday life.
While frequently framed as a challenging novel, Milkman has resonated with critics and readers alike since the work won the Man Booker Prize in October 2018. Expressing the thoughts of many book reviewers, Ron Charles of the Washington Post branded Anna Burns' third book "the best last novel of [last] year" and "something strange and complex," a throwback to the complicated fiction of modernist titans such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In spite of early fears that the novel would demand too much from casual readers, its sales also have soared, with over 300,000 copies sold in the UK and Ireland. The unexpected winner of the Booker has provoked very little controversy at a time when the prize itself has been facing a high level of ...
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