The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
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Milkman
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2019 WP Shortlist - Milkman
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rated it 5 stars
Mar 19, 2019 04:40AM
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Milkman by Anna Burns
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I did not like this book back in August but now I think it’s a masterpiece. I’m slowly planning my blog review
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It’s covers so many topics. It’s impressive
My fiancée just read this and loved it like I did when I read it for the Booker, so I got to experience parts of the book again as she laughed and admired it out loud. We both felt a bit fatigued by the poison girl plot but otherwise it’s a stellar read. Since it went on to win the Booker, I already gave the first spot in my WP rankings to another book, Lost Children Archive.
I'm listening to this in audio format and am glad that was what I could get. Given many of the comments in the other thread, the audio is wonderful. Stream of consciousness actually makes sense. The reader's (I don't know who is reading, may be the author) inflections and accent help to understand the narrative. So far I'd give it a 4 or 5 stars.
Since I am no longer allowed to link my blog on my goodreads book review - I'll link my review here: https://thebobsphere.wordpress.com/20...
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https://thebobsphere.wordpress.com/20..."
Is that a new rule? Is it when a review is a links only, or including a link as well as pasting the review?
Robert I just read your review on your website. Thanks for writing it. I've discovered only lately the pleasure of re-reading a book that stymied me the first time. Often it's people on goodreads who convince me to give it another try, which is one of the unique pleasures of this community of readers.
Lark wrote: "Robert I just read your review on your website. Thanks for writing it. I've discovered only lately the pleasure of re-reading a book that stymied me the first time. Often it's people on goodreads w..."Thanks
i like the way you drew attention to the cover. What a lovely scene that was.
Lark wrote: "i like the way you drew attention to the cover. What a lovely scene that was."I was going to expand on that but I thought the review was too long.
I liked the use of symbolism - The fact that the Fench class argue that a sky shouold just be described as blue and yet the narrator does realise that a sky CAN contain a multitude of colors - I saw it as Burns showing how closed minded, even if over the pond, people can be.
And then her experiences which maybe boyfriend and sunsets which Milkman finds pedestrian, which makes him no better than the French class. In a way Maybe Boyfriend is a sunset, because as we find out later on that he not only one shade but many.
I have gushed over this book enough already and wouldn’t mind Iseeing it win, but as it has won the Booker, I’d like to see another book win. Right now my choice would probably be Freshwater, but I have a few more books on order so that might change.
The sky color bit was one of my favorite scenes from the novel.
I thought Milkman was well-written and told an important story. But I didn't particularly care for the narrator. Being inside the messy mind of an 18 year old is not my favorite place to be, just as it was not my favorite time of life.
Shortlisted for best fiction book and best audio book on the British Book Awards.
Milkman is a stream of consciousness story narrated by an unnamed young woman living in an unnamed part of Belfast (probably the Ardoyne), some time in the late 1970s. By way of context, the intensity of the killings in the early 1970s – especially the civilian deaths – had subsided; there had been population movement and people had retreated into small, “safe” pockets exclusively populated by people of the same political tradition (which was also generally correlated to people’s national identity and religion). Both unionists and nationalists still thought they could win the war through armed conflict, and the political voice of Sinn Féin had not yet come to the fore. The Hunger Strikes were still a couple of years into the future and most people could remember a time before the British Army was deployed to assist the civil power…
So the novel is almost a love story set in this quite specific time period. Our narrator lives in a Catholic enclave of North Belfast. She reads 19th century novels while walking, which marks her out as a bit odd. Her maybe-boyfriend is a car mechanic from another unspecified Catholic district of Belfast. She is from a large family, four-ish brothers and three sisters and Ma. Da is dead.
Our narrator talks to herself extensively in a colloquial Belfast voice that hinges on repetition and over-explanation. It is a sarcastic voice, cynical about the sectarian conflict and the motives of those who engaged in it. She narrates in euphemisms: the Sorrows, Renouncers of the State, Defenders of the State, the country across the water, the country across the border. People are second sister, the real milkman, chef, the tablets girl, Somebody McSomebody. Similarly places are not names and although most are recognisable – the reservoirs and the parks is Cavehill Road; the ten minute area is Carlisle Circus; the usual place is Milltown cemetery – the euphemisms allow liberties to be taken with the geography.
The resulting text is very dense, often circular (at the very least non-linear) and pretty intense. It is like Eimear McBride crossed with James Kelman.
The story is one of personal love and personal tragedy set within a dysfunctional society. Our narrator wants to be with maybe-boyfriend, but is admired by Milkman (a senior ranking paramilitary) and Somebody McSomebody (a wannabe paramilitary – was this a time before spides?). In a world where normal law and order does not operate, where law is made by the paramilitaries and is mutable, where whispers and innuendoes constitute evidence, this is a dangerous space. Our narrator knows the perils and even the most mundane activities – jogging by the reservoirs, buying chips, learning French, winning a scrap Blower Bentley supercharger – can be fraught with danger. Her quirky narration and eccentric world view manage to create deliciously black comedy from these dangers.
Milkman is a timely novel. This period of the late 1970s has been largely airbrushed out of both world and Northern Irish history. Nowadays the Republican movement has been rehabilitated. They are seen to champion human rights and to lead the equality agenda. Its history is seen to be the ballot box in one hand and the armalite in the other. Their community justice is seen to have been a viable – almost legitimate – alternative to the RUC and the state agencies. It is often almost assumed that those who lost their lives (apart from in the early 1970s) had been “involved”. But what we see is a violent society with kangaroo courts based on self-interest and hypocrisy, arbitrary expulsions, witch hunts, suspicion. Paramilitaries tyrannise their own communities but the communities seem to lap it up. Each fresh atrocity is just casually dropped into conversation.
More than anything, our narrator, her family and friends needed stability and predictability. What they got was the law of the jungle. And we know from history that they had 15 more years of this ahead of them before the first signs of the re-emergence of normality.
Of course all this is viewed from a nationalist vantage point but we can safely assume that the situation was mirrored in the loyalist community across the road.
And Milkman is also relevant to current developments as we start to see the emergence of an anti-political movement based on extreme and ill-planned actions. Brexit as a response to immigration and crime. Walls and travel bans and flip-flopping between nations and leaders being best friends and beyond the pale.
If Milkman has a failing, it is that the meandering narration can frustrate the reader. There are few natural pauses, there can be a feeling that we have already covered this ground, ideas and phrases repeat. But they do add up to a work that is strong enough to carry the frustration. Milkman is a mature work that does say something new (or at least say it in a new way) in a field that has been ploughed often before.
That is spot on as both a review of the book and of the situation it is set in, although the British Army was not initially deployed to assist the civil power as it was enforced, but to neutrally enforce the law; that lasted less than a year.
It was MHG that first introduce this forum to Anna Burns writing immediately after the Booker longlist announcement.
...and why I bought it.
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I've checked this rule in Feedback. It's not new but it's fine to include an excerpt from the review with a link.
Post from the customer care director in 2016:
Reviews that only contain a link to a blog or another site aren't within our review guidelines. It's worth noting that Goodreads reviews that have at least an excerpt of the off-site review are okay, though.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Antonomasia wrote: "Robert wrote: "Since I am no longer allowed to link my blog on my goodreads book review - I'll link my review here: "I've checked this rule in Feedback. It's not new but it's fine to include an e..."
Yes - Thanks and I appreciate that but I think I'll stop linking on goodreads, except on the forums, anyway the majority of my blog views come from twitter or actual forum posts.
