{"id":24863,"date":"2018-10-23T13:19:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T17:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=24863"},"modified":"2018-10-23T13:19:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T17:19:10","slug":"anna-burns-milkman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2018\/10\/23\/anna-burns-milkman\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Burns: Milkman<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Milkman<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Anna Burns (2018)<\/span>
\nFaber & Faber (2018)<\/span>
\n368 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

[\/fusion_title][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” class=”” id=””]<\/p>\n

\"\"[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]W[\/fusion_dropcap]inner — rightfully so — of the 2018 Man Booker Prize!<\/p>\n

But it was a game — more toy soldiers on toy battlefields, more toy trains in the attic, hard men in their teens, hard men in their twenties, hard men in their thirties, in their forties, with the mentality being toys even if it was far from toys these men were playing with.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The standout novel on this year’s Man Booker list, Anna Burns’ wonderful Milkman<\/em> begins:<\/p>\n

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, \u2018knew me to see but not to speak to\u2019 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.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The voice of this novel is wonderfully distinctive — Lisa McInerney meets Javier Mar\u00edas — a type of first-person stream of consciousness except it isn’t really, as the story is being narrated after the event and the narrator’s thoughts are highly reflective and circular.<\/p>\n

Milkman<\/em> is also set in a specific but not explicitly specified time and place, Republican Belfast in the late 1970s, but written in a way that gives it wider applicability to any closed groups in divided societies.<\/p>\n

The narrator’s (now deceased) Da never could remember the names of her and her several siblings:<\/p>\n

As for the names of us offspring, never could he remember them, not without running through a chronological list in his head. While doing this, he\u2019d include his sons\u2019 names even if searching for the name of a daughter. And vice versa. Sooner or later, by running through, he\u2019d hit on the correct one at last. Even that though, became too much and so, after a bit, he dropped the mental catalogue, opting instead for \u2018son\u2019 or \u2018daughter\u2019 which was easier. And he was right. It was easier which was how the rest of us came to substitute \u2018brother\u2019 and \u2018sister\u2019 and so on ourselves.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except the narrator extends this to extremes. Not only are her family members referred to as, for example, third brother-in-law and the wee sisters, but the other characters in the community (the family dog I think the one exception) are given similar functional designations. Inter alia the cast features Milkman (who isn’t actually a milkman); real milkman (who is); almost-boyfriend; tablets girl, a.k.a. the district poisoner; tablets girl’s disconcerting shiny sister; nuclear boy; Somebody McSomebody; and the preachy issue women and the pious women of the nieghbourhood (who become the ex-pious women when the district’s most eligible bachelor becomes available).<\/p>\n

It is a wonderfully effective technique, true (if highly exaggerated) to the way people are often referred to in close communities and, in passing, makes life a lot easier for the reader as well (who actually needs to know or cares about a character’s given name?).<\/p>\n

It also gives for some memorable characters, for example, Mr and Mrs International, almost-boyfriend’s parents, who simply walked out on their young family to pursue their career in world-class ballroom dancing, leaving a note saying:<\/p>\n

\u2018Sorry kids. Seeing things in right relation we should never have had children. We\u2019re just off dancing forever. Sorry again — but at least now you\u2019re grown up.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

After this, there was an afterthought: \u2018Well, those of you who aren\u2019t grown up can be brought up and finished by those of you who are — and look, please have everything — including the house.\u2019<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the narrator’s precocious and analytical wee sisters:<\/p>\n

After that, if ma still wasn\u2019t back by wee sisters\u2019 bedtime, I\u2019d read them some Hardy for they were well into their Hardy phase. Before that it had been their Kafka phase followed by their Conrad phase which was absurd given none of them had reached ten.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

She did return, but not till after dark, by which time wee sisters were in bed, lulled to sleep by Rice Krispies, Tayto Crisps, Paris Buns, bread-in-the-pan, halibut orange tablets with extra sugar on everything. Then there was Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which was their choice of matter.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She also extends this technique to descriptions of place — the local area consists of the usual place, the reservoirs and the parks, the ten minute area etc. (Over at Goodreads, MisterHobgoblin’s excellent review (here<\/a>) maps these to real places in Belfast.<\/p>\n

And to the description of the trouble’s themselves, the area caught between loyalty to the country “over the water” and the country “over the border.”<\/p>\n

At this time, in this place, when it came to the political problems, which included bombs and guns and death and maiming, ordinary people said \u2018their side did it\u2019 or \u2018our side did it\u2019, or \u2018their religion did it\u2019 or \u2018our religion did it\u2019 or \u2018they did it\u2019 or \u2018we did it\u2019, when what was really meant was \u2018defenders-of-the-state did it\u2019 or \u2018renouncers-of-the-state did it\u2019 or \u2018the state did it\u2019.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In such a divided community, everything is politicized.<\/p>\n

The need to declare one’s affiliation absolutely even extends to the choice of Christian names, which perhaps also links to the narrator’s refusal to use them in her story:<\/p>\n

The names not allowed were not allowed for the reason they were too much of the country \u2018over the water\u2019, with it no matter that some of those names hadn\u2019t originated in that country but instead had been appropriated and put to use by the people of that land. The banned names were understood to have become infused with the energy, the power of history, the age-old conflict, enjoinments and resisted impositions as laid down long ago in this country by that country, with the original nationality of the name now not in the running at all. The banned names were: Nigel, Jason, Jasper, Lance, Percival, Wilbur, Wilfred, Peregrine, Norman, Alf, Reginald, Cedric, Ernest, George, Harvey, Arnold, Wilberine, Tristram, Clive, Eustace, Auberon, Felix, Peverill, Winston, Godfrey, Hector, with Hubert, a cousin of Hector, also not allowed. Nor was Lambert or Lawrence or Howard or the other Laurence or Lionel or Randolph because Randolph was like Cyril which was like Lamont which was like Meredith, Harold, Algernon and Beverley.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The list continues for almost another page, but one suspects the choice of Nigel (first name of the self-proclaimed architect of Brexit and Piers Morgan’s rival for best British friend of Trump) as first on the list was not accidental on the author’s behalf.<\/p>\n

As regards this psycho-political atmosphere, with its rules of allegiance, of tribal identification, of what was allowed and not allowed, matters didn\u2019t stop at \u2018their names\u2019 and at \u2018our names\u2019, at \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019, at \u2018our community\u2019 and \u2018their community\u2019, at \u2018over the road\u2019, \u2018over the water\u2019 and \u2018over the border\u2019. Other issues had similar directives attaching as well. There were neutral television programmes which could hail from \u2018over the water\u2019 or from \u2018over the border\u2019 yet be watched by everyone \u2018this side of the road\u2019 as well as \u2018that side of the road\u2019 without causing disloyalty in either community. Then there were programmes that could be watched without treason by one side whilst hated and detested \u2018across the road\u2019 on the other side.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even hospital is out of bounds to her community given that it is seen as under the control of the state:<\/p>\n

\u2018She\u2019s fine, out and about\u2019 was the communal prognosis upon her, also the communal euphemism for \u2018mended though broken\u2019, itself another euphemism for \u2018in urgent need of medical care and attention\u2019, all of which the person in need unfortunately was not going to attend hospital to get.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But perhaps the novel’s key message is how this extends to the pressure to conform, particularly for women. The narrator is damming of the boy-with-toys self-importance of renouncers (see the opening quote). Renouncing the state soon extends to renouncing any aberrant behavior deemed “beyond the pale”:<\/p>\n

There was also that day-to-day business of dirty laundry in public, and of the district renouncers laying down their law, their prescripts, their ordinances plus punishments for any perceived infringements of them. There were beatings, brandings, tar and featherings, disappearances, black-eyed, multi-bruised people walking about with missing digits who most certainly had those digits only the day before. There were too, the impromptu courts held in the district\u2019s hutments, also in other disused buildings and houses specially friendly to the renouncers.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for the narrator herself, before she gets allegedly involved with Milkman, a leading renouncer himself, she is already beyond-the-pale due to the grievous sin of reading while walking:<\/p>\n

Often I would walk along reading books. I didn\u2019t see anything wrong with this but it became something else to be added as further proof against me. \u2018Reading-while-walking\u2019 was definitely on the list.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not as if, friend,\u2019 she said, \u2018this were a case of a person glancing at some newspaper as they\u2019re walking along to get the latest headlines or something. It\u2019s the way you do it — reading books, whole books, taking notes, checking footnotes, underlining passages as if you\u2019re at some desk or something, in a little private study or something, the curtains closed, your lamp on, a cup of tea beside you, essays being penned — your discourses, your lucubrations. It\u2019s disturbing. It\u2019s deviant. It\u2019s optical illusional. Not public-spirited. Not self-preservation. Calls attention to itself and why — with enemies at the door, with the community under siege, with us all having to pull together — would anyone want to call attention to themselves here?\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Hold on a minute,\u2019 I said. \u2018Are you saying it\u2019s okay for him to go around with Semtex but not okay for me to read Jane Eyre<\/em> in public?\u2019<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the story opens, the narrator suffers from jamais vu, a refusal to confront the reality of her trouble and contradictory situation, but the events of the novel force her to take stock, realizing that even her reading-while-walking was form of escape from reality:<\/p>\n

\u2018What do you mean my jamais vu?\u2019 I asked. Then I asked, \u2018What do you mean another bout of jamais vu? Are you saying I have jamais vu and that frequently I have it?\u2019 which was when it came out that, similar to the way in which I would block as unfamiliar from my memory all my periodic attempts to establish a proper relationship between me and maybe-boyfriend, instead thinking each time to be the first time at furthering on our intimacy, here too, according to friend, I\u2019d experience illusions of never having been stopped previously by the state security forces when it was obvious I was stopped by them, she maintained, all the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/p>\n

Impossible then, with all these irreconcilables, to account, not just politically-correctly, but even sensibly for oneself. Hence, the dichotomy, the cauterising, the jamais vu, the blanking-out, the reading-while-walking — even my consideration of whether to forgo the current codex altogether for the safety of the scroll and papyrus of earlier centuries.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Overall a wonderful novel. Extremely funny, absorbing to read, with important messages, and ever-so-slightly-bonkers. But as the narrator concludes:<\/p>\n

All this made sense within the context of our intricately coiled, overly secretive, hyper-gossipy, puritanical yet indecent, totalitarian district.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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