Book Review: Milkman by Anna Burns

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Matilda Singer reviews this year’s Booker Prize winning novel.

Anna Burns’ third novel, Milkman, relays the story of a young girl as she becomes the object of desire of an older man, a sinister paramilitary leader: the milkman. Already established as an outcast in this close-knit community (she’s been known to walk through town reading 18th century literature and her mother berates her lack of interest in marriage), she quickly becomes the subject of idle speculation and small-town gossip, regardless of the veracity of these rumours. 

Although sexual politics and tribalism are timely themes that speak to our contemporary anxieties, the distinctive stream of consciousness style is what marks out this book as a unique work from 2018. The plot meanders from riverside runs to French class, following the protagonist’s movements and her frequently tangential train of thought. Described as a ‘voice’ novel and often being recommended in audio format rather than print, reading Milkman is like being underwater, submerged in the narrator’s subconscious. It is a novel bloated with words, paragraphs spreading out to the page margins, as if Burns is trying to squeeze in every syllable she can. Oft times, this makes the prose impenetrable, so the reader is shut out in the same way an outsider might be sidelined from the community in the book.

Our confusion and mistrust is further heightened by Burns’ choice to leave all characters unnamed. Not only does this represent the way individual expression has been eroded, such that each character only exists in relation to another (our narrator is ‘Middle Sister’ and her relatives are ‘First Brother-in-Law’), but acts of violence and betrayal – commonplace in such a sectarian community – are effectively depersonalised. 

Born in a working class, Catholic and fiercely nationalist district of Belfast in the early 60s, Burns lived through the political turmoil of late 20th century Ireland and, perhaps because of this, politics inevitably filters into her fiction. Indeed, the political backdrop in Milkman is just as important as the unnamed characters and meandering plot. Within a few pages we can deduce the setting as 1970s Northern Ireland, most likely Belfast. It is the height of the Troubles; car bombs and poisonings are banal, the country ‘over the water’ looms large and no one can be trusted.

Yet the prose is devoid of customary details that would truly ground the plot in a specific time and place. Which makes us momentarily question; is this Taliban controlled Middle East? Stalinist Russia? Medieval England? Or perhaps a dystopian future? It doesn’t matter. Either way, all individuals must take care to know the difference between ‘The right butter. The wrong butter. The tea of allegiance. The tea of betrayal’. In this way, the novel presents a universal plight, explored through this specific Northern Irish community and punctuated by Burns’ authorial sensitivity and Middle Sister’s dark humour. 

Many will have come across Milkman as a result of it winning the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards for novels written in the English language. In a certain way, reviewing this novel post Booker win makes it impossible not to consider the contentious critical reception that followed the 2018 winner announcement. That is, the way the book was marked out by critics as complex and challenging, with Chair of Judges, Kwame Anthony Appiah, taking to the podium with the misjudged defence; ‘I spend my time reading articles in the Journal of Philosophy so by my standards this is not too hard’. 

Even as a voracious reader, I was taken in by the commentary and sniffed at the pretentious title that had taken home the prize over crowd-pleasers Washington Black and Normal People (both of which I would still warmly recommend). However, the profoundly thought-provoking and fiercely funny novel Burns has delivered overturns any preconceptions I once had and instead raises age-old questions about what exactly makes great literature, and who gets to decide? Milkman may be an unusual book, but it is one that I wish to press into the hands of as many readers as possible.